'   • 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 

HOW    TO    DO    IT. 

BY  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE. 

CONTENTS. 

How  to  Talk ;  How  to  Write ;  How  to  Read ;  How  to  go 
into  Society  ;  How  to  Travel ;  Life  at  School  and  in  Vacation  ; 
Life  Alone ;  Habits  with  Children ;  Life  with  your  Elders ; 
Habits  of  Reading ;  Getting  Ready. 

i6MO.    PRICE  $1.00. 

"  The  little  work  is  intended  especially  for  the  benefit  of  young  readers, 
but  it  is  equally  adapted  to  give  pleasure  to  the  older  members  of  the  family 
circle.  It  is  weighty  in  thought,  of  acute  observation,  versatile  in  its  illus- 
trations and  examples,  affectionate  in  tone,  and  racy  in  expression."  — 
N.  Y.  Tribune. 

"  This  is  a  very  sensible  little  book.  '  How  to  Do  It '  means  '  how  you 
are  to  behave  in  society,'  '  how  you  are  to  read,'  '  how  you  are  to  live  with 
your  elders,'  and  '  how  with  children,'  &c.  On  all  these  points  Mr.  Hale 
gives  very  shrewd,  kindly  advice.  The  first  chapter,  with  its  description 
and  reminiscences  of  Boston  as  it  was,  will  charm  every  reader,  and  tempt 
him  to  go  further,  when  indeed  he  can  scarcely  fail  to  get  much  good."  — 
London  Spectator. 

"It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  this  charming,  amusing,  and  useful  little 
book  is  only  for  young  people.  It  is  equally  needed  by  multitudes  of 
people  who  have  less  knowledge  than 'years;  parents  who  do  not  know 
1  how  to  do  it '  any  better  than  their  sons  and  daughters ;  men  and  women, 
well  informed  in  current  matters  of  interest,  but  who  do  not  know  how  to 
read,  or  write,  or  talk,  or  travel,  or  go  into  society,  or  even  behave  at  church, 
in  a  proper  manner.  Let  them  get  this  book,  and  Mr.  Hale,  in  his  quaint, 
humorous,  attractive,  and  sensible  way,  will  tell  them  exactly  how  to  do  all 
these  things,  and  more.  His  pages  are  crowded  with  good  sense  and  prac- 
tical wisdom,  and  bright  with  anecdote  and  story,  with  pleasant  talk  and 
words  of  cheer,  which  not  only  show  how  to  do  it,  but  are  sure  to  teach 
courage  to  the  timid,  and  modesty  to  the  self-sufficient,  in  doing  it."  — 
Universalist  Quarterly. 

Sold  by  all  Booksellers.  Mailed,  postpaid,  by  the  Pub- 
lishers, 

ROBERTS    BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 


EDWARD   E.   KALE'S   WRITINGS. 


TEN  TIMES   ONE   IS   TEN.     i6mo.     75  cents. 

CHRISTMAS   EVE  AND  CHRISTMAS  DAY:  Ten  Christ- 
mas Stories.     With  Frontispiece  by  Darley.     i6mo.     $1.25. 

UPS   AND   DOWNS.     An  Every-day  Novel.    i6mo.    $1.50. 
A   SUMMER  VACATION.     Paper  covers.     50  cents. 
IN   HIS   NAME.     Square  iSmo.    $1.00. 
OUR    NEW    CRUSADE.     Square  iSmo.    $1.00. 

IF,  YES,  AND   PERHAPS.    Four  Possibilities  and  Six  Exag- 
gerations, with  some  Bits  of  Facts.     i6mo.     $1.25. 

THE  INGHAM   PAPERS.     i6mo.    $1.25. 
WORKINGMEN'S    HOMES.     Illustrated.     i6mo.    $1.00. 
HOW  TO   DO   IT.     i6mo.    $1.00. 
HIS  LEVEL  BEST.     i6mo.    $1.25. 

THE    GOOD    TIME   COMING;    or,  Our   New   Crusade.     A 
Temperance  Story.     Square  iSmo.     Paper  covers.     50  cents. 

G.  T.  T. ;    or,  The  Wonderful  Adventures  of  a  Pullman.    $1.00. 

WHAT  CAREER?  or,  The  Choice  of  a  Vocation  and  the  Use 
of  Time.     i6mo.    $1.25. 


For  sale  by  all  Booksellers.      Mailed,  postpaid,  by  the 
Publishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


WHAT  CAREER? 


TEN    PAPERS   ON   THE 


CHOICE    OF  A    VOCATION   AND 
THE    USE    OF    TIME. 


BY  E.  E.  HALE, 
<o 

AUTHOR    OF     "  HOW    TO    DO    IT." 


BOSTON: 

ROBERTS     BROTHERS. 
1878. 


c/(\ 


Copyright, 
BY  ROBERTS  BROTHERS. 

1878. 


CAMBRIDGE: 
PRESS  OF  JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON. 


TO 

MY  BRETHREN 
OF 

ALPHA    DELTA    PHI, 

THIS  VOLUME  IS   DEDICATED. 

EDWARD  E.   HALE. 


ROXBURY,  MASS., 

December  IT,  1877. 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I.     THE  LEADERS  LEAD 1 

II.     THE  SPECIALTIES 29 

III.  NOBLESSE  OBLIGE 51 

IV.  THE  MIND'S  MAXIMUM *  .     .  75 

V.     A  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 127 

VI.     CHARACTER 155 

VII.     RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  YOUNG  MEN  .     .     .  180 

VIII.     STUDY  OUTSIDE  SCHOOL 204 

.  IX.     THE  TRAINING  OF  MEN 221 

X.    EXERCISE  .     .                   .         251 


WHAT    CAREER? 


I. 

THE     LEADERS     LEAD. 

As  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  CONVENTION  OF  ALPHA 
DELTA  PHI,  AT  WILLIAMS  COLLEGE,  MAY  24,  1877. 

"\T7HO  are  the  leaders  of  society,  gentlemen, 

and  how  shall  they  be  found  ? 
This  question,  in  one  way  or  another,  is  of 
course  at  the  bottom  of  all  questions  of  govern- 
ment. As  we  live,  it  is  often  vaguely  and 
often  falsely  answered,  because  people  are 
misled  by  the  analogies  of  European  litera- 
ture and  history, — analogies  which  must  de- 
ceive, in  social  conditions  so  utterly  new  as 
ours.  Our  President  is  not  a  king  ;  our  people 
is  not  a  third  estate ;  our  churches  are  not 
hierarchies ;  our  aristocracy  is  not  hereditary. 
There  is  no  resemblance  between  the  duty  of 
the  governor  of  an  American  State  and  that 
l 


2  WHAT    CAREER? 

of  the  prefect  of  a  French  department  or  the 
lord-lieutenant  of  an  English  county.  For 
such  reasons,  it  becomes  impossible  to  trans- 
fer from  the  older  systems  of  government  to 
our  systems  even  the  commonplaces,  or  what 
are  called  the  axioms,  of  their  political  and 
social  economy.  And  the  attempt  to  make 
such  transfer,  on  the  part  of  half-trained 
writers,  confuses  and  in  the  end  embarrasses 
our  administration  of  our  own  affairs.  It  is 
indeed  the  origin  of  half  that  pessimism  which 
tells  us  in  each  hour  that  we  are  going  to 
perdition.  A  prominent  English  writer  said 
to  me  once :  "  Of  course  you  know  that  there 
never  was  any  thing  we  call  a  nation  which 
extended  from  one  ocean  to  another."  I  said : 
"  I  know  it  very  well ;  but  our  exact  business 
is  to  show  that  what  we  call  a  nation  can 
extend  from  one  ocean  to  the  other."  But  I 
had  to  add,  that  "  what  we  call  a  nation  is 
something  world-wide  apart  from  what  you 
call  a  nation,  and  that  is  the  reason  why  you 
never  understand  us."  I  might  have  added,  I 
suppose,  "  why  we  never  understand  you." 


WHAT    CAREER?  3 

This  sort  of  vagueness,  not  to  say  misappre- 
hension, affects  the  question,  Who  are  our 
Leaders ;  where  are  they  at  work,  and  how 
are  they  to  be  found?  Thomas  Carlyle  —  the 
especial  absolutist  of  our  time  —  growls  out 
his  dissatisfaction  with  all  democratic  systems 
of  finding  leaders.  Other  grumblers  and 
growlers  of  his  own  nation,  or  of  other  nations, 
take  up  the  easy  refrain,  and  on  the  same  or 
on  another  key  repeat  the  dissatisfaction  with 
what  is.  I  am  afraid  that  young  men  who 
read  the  journals  much,  not  having  yet  found 
out  the  best  ways  of  saving  time,  are  apt  to  be 
unduly  impressed  by  the  weeping  and  wailing 
and  gnashing  of  teeth  of  those  writers  for  the 
press,  who  find  nothing  good  outside  the  walls 
of  their  own  offices.  In  the  vain  attempt  to 
apply  European  precedents  to  American  real- 
ities, such  writers,  especially  if  they  have  been 
educated  abroad,  tell  us,  week  by  week,  that 
the  Pope  is  quite  wrong,  and  the  Patriarch  of 
the  Greek  Church  equally  wrong ;  that  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  is  wholly  wrong,  and 
that  Protestantism  is  not  worth  mention ;  that 


4  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  Emperor  of  Russia  is  wrong,  while  the 
Sultan  was  never  right ;  that  Count  Bismark  is 
lamentably  wrong,  Marshal  McMahon  entirely 
mistaken,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
each  as  absurd  as  the  other ;  that  General  Grant 
was  all  wrong,  and  that  Mr.  Hayes  is  all 
wrong ;  that  no  man  of  any  sense  cares  for  Gov- 
ernor Robinson  or  Governor  Rice ;  and  that 
there  is  not  a  city  in  America  which  has  any 
notion  of  what  government  is  or  should  be. 
The  oracles  are  dumb,  the  lamp  of  God  has 
burned  out,  —  if  indeed  there  be  any  God,  which 
they  say  is  doubtful.  There  is  no  open  vision. 
From  such  meanings  unutterable  the  educated 
young  men  of  America  would  sink  back,  de- 
spairing, but  that  always  in  the  same  issue  of 
the  same  journal,  whichever  it  may  be,  there 
appears  one  gleam  of  golden  hope.  For  it 
seems  that  in  that  particular  office,  by  the 
united  graces  of  natural  selection,  of  evolu- 
tion, and  of  accident,  there  is  one  clear  fountain 
of  absolute  truth  and  absolute  wisdom.  From 
that  office  weekly  will  trickle  forth  rills  of  wise 
direction,  sufficient  for  one  week  for  the  salva- 


WHAT    CAREER?  5 

tion  of  the  land.  If  only  the  people  will 
subscribe  liberally  to  this  particular  journal, 
whichever  it  may  be,  all  will  be  well ! 

Now  it  happens,  in  fact,  that  our  fathers,  of 
the  era  of  the  Revolution  and  the  generation 
after, -relieved  us  from  many  of  the  European 
dangers  and  evils.  Grant  that  we  have  many 
of  our  own:  of  course  we  have.  Still  it  is  a 
shame  that  we  should  be  taught  that  the  par- 
ticular evils  of  Europe  are  on  our  shoulders ; 
and  that  the  great  grievance  of  all  in  their 
affairs  is  a  grievance  in  ours.  The  grievance 
in  their  affairs  is  doubtless  what  Carlyle  says 
it  is.  "  The  man  who  raw,"  he  says,  "  is  not 
king.  He  ought  to  be  king.  Canning,  cunning, 
konig,  —  man  who  is  able,  —  ought  to  be  the 
man  who  reigns."  You  cannot  say  this  is  true, 
whether  in  England,  in  Germany,  in  Italy,  or 
in  Spain.  You  cannot  say  that  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  or  the  Emperor  of  Germany,  or  King 
Victor  Emmanuel,  or  the  King  Alfonso  is  the 
ablest  man  in  either  country.  If  then  you 
stick  to  the  theory  that  the  king  is  the  ruler, 
you  must  own  that  the  time  is  out  of  joint, 


6  WHAT    CAREER'? 

and  that  the  world  has  not  hit  on  a  good  way 
to  find  its  leaders.  But  when  you  come  over 
to  America,  it  is  not  the  President  who  rules, 
it  is  not  the  governor  of  a  State  who  rules. 
It  is  the  people  who  rule.  And  though  in 
England  your  mournful  poet  may  sing  of 
unknown 

"  Hands  that  the  rod  of  empire  might  have  swayed ;  " 

of  "  village  Hampdens,"  or  "  inglorious  Miltons," 
—  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  we  have  any 
inglorious  Miltons  or  village  Hampdens.  It  is 
certain  that  our  system  attempts  to  keep  open 
the  lines  of  promotion,  which  the  systems  of 
the  Old  World  generally  try  to  close.  Because 
we  keep  them  open,  —  certainly  so  far  as  we  keep 
them  open,  —  we  shall  find  the  real  correction 
and  the  truly  conservative  element  in  our 
affairs.  I  believe,  gentlemen,  that  we  shall  find 
in  our  history,  and  in  our  present  fortune,  that 

THE  LEADERS  LEAD. 

To  justify  this   thesis  will   be   my  effort  in 
this  hour. 


WHAT    CAREER?  7 

I.  It  will  probably  be  found  that  in  all  his- 
tory Mr.  Canning's  epigram  is  true, —  that  the 
horse  drags  the  cart,  and  the  cart  does  not  push 
the  horse  along.  After  the  glamour  of  the  time, 
—  after  the  smoke  and  dust  have  passed  away, 
history  will  probably  always  show  that  certain 
men  and  women,  who,  as  the  Book  of  Proverbs 
says,  no  man  of  their  own  time  has  much  cared 
for,  have  still  been  they  who  have  saved  the 
city.  Even  in  those  complicated  arrangements 
of  the  Old  World,  your  Napoleon  and  Cromwell, 
your  Calvin  and  Luther,  your  Hildebrand  and 
other  Gregories,  —  men  who  were  not  born  to 
thrones, — have  a  very  uncomfortable  way  of 
tumbling  thrones  over,  and,  if  they  choose, 
erecting  others  in  their  places.  Take  such  a 
life  as  that  of  Bernard  of  Clairvaux.  Not  long 
after  William  the  Conqueror  landed  in  England, 
Bernard  was  born  in  Burgundy.  A  young 
man,  he  chose  a  monastic  life.  A  young  man, 
only  twenty-five  years  old,  he  chose  twelve 
companions,  and,  with  their  spades  and  hoes  on 
their  shoulders,  they  marched  into  a  wilderness 
of  banditti  to  found  a  convent.  They  sep- 
arated themselves  from  all  command,  you  say. 


8  WHAT    CAREER? 

They  sank  into  lazy  and  selfish  seclusion. 
That  is  because  you  take  the  word  "  king  "  as 
being  the  only  word  that  means  "ruler."  In 
fact,  Bernard  was  a  born  Leader.  He  could 
not  help  leading.  From  the  Wormwood  valley 
in  which  he  settled,  he  called  up  the  "  Clara 
Vallis,"  —  the  Clairvaux, — which  was,  for  cen- 
turies, the  centre  of  light  to  Europe.  From  that 
centre  he  sent  out  like-organized  emigration  into 
a  hundred  other  centres  of  barbarism  and  plun- 
der. Before  he  died,  he  was  the  centre  of  the 
education  of  his  time  :  and  that  meant  the  gov- 
ernment, nay,  it  seems  to  have  meant  even  the 
agriculture  and  art,  of  his  time.  The  little 
kings  referred  their  quarrels  to  this  leader  of 
men.  Conclave  after  conclave  asked  him  to  be 
Pope.  But  he  knew,  as  he  said,  that  he  was 
more  Pope  than  the  Popes  he  made.  Such  a 
man  as  that  changes  the  social  order  of  Europe, 
introduces  a  new  civilization,  starts  crusades  on 
their  career  whether  of  darkness  or  of  light, 
sets  up  kings,  and  throws  them  down.  Yet 
when  you  have  to  put  him  in  a  class,  he  is 
neither  emperor,  king,  duke,  nor  prince.  He 
is  something  much  more  than  any  one  of  them : 


WHAT    CAREER?  9 

he  is  a  Leader  of  men.  The  Leader  leads,  and 
the  "  thrones,  dominations,  princedoms,  virtues, 
powers,"  meekly  and  orderly  obey. 

But  it  is  not  my  business  to  show  that  the 
Old  World  offers  to  all  men  alike  the  field  and 
chance  for  a  noble  ambition.  The  difficulties 
are  legion  which  have  been  reared  there,  to 
prevent  the  man  of  native  genius  from  making 
his  way  to  the  front.  And  the  contrivances 
are  endless,  as  all  the  satirists  show,  by  which 
incompetent  men  are  bolstered  up  to  power,  — 
the  lame  pigeon,  as  Paley  said,  taking  the  rule 
of  the  flock.  I  am  very  sorry  for  them.  But 
my  business  is  not  with  them.  My  effort  now 
is  to  show  that,  thanks  to  the  system  to  which 
we  are  born,  which  is  so  natural  that  we  forget 
that  it  exists,  these  difficulties  fall  away  with 
us,  and  these  contrivances  are  futile.  With  us 
the  lines  of  promotion  are  open.  In  that  is  the 
secret  of  our  successes.  To  keep  them  open  is 
the  first  duty  of  our  self-preservation.  Because 
they  are  open,  and  as  long  as  they  are  kept 
open,  with  us 

THE  LEADERS  LEAD. 
i* 


10  WHAT    CAREER? 

There  is  a  pathetic  story  of  a  lad  named 
MacDonald,  who  was  born  in  Oregon  ;^and  who, 
before  he  was  a  man,  was  shipwrecked  on  the 
shore  of  Japan.  According  to  the  cruel  cus- 
tom of  the  old  government  of  that  country,  he 
was  caged,  in  the  province  where  his  life  was 
saved,  and  kept  there  as  a  prisoner  indefinitely. 
It  was  while  he  was  so  held,  that  an  American 
Commodore  touched  at  Nagasaki,  and  in  an 
interview  on  the  deck  of  his  own  ship  was 
struck  by  a  Japanese  official.  The  Japanese 
government  was  alarmed.  They  wanted  to 
know  just  what  they  had  done ;  and  they  sent 
for  young  MacDonald  to  ask  what  was  the 
grade  of  a  commodore  ;  —  how  many  grades  of 
officers  were  below  him.  He  told  them,  with 
precision,  of  sailors,  midshipmen,  passed-mid- 
shipmen,  commanders,  lieutenants,  captains. 
Above  these  in  their  order,  he  said,  was  the 
commodore.  Then  they  asked  how  many 
grades  were  above  a  commodore.  It  was  before 
the  times  of  admirals,  and  young  MacDonald 
told  them  of  the  Navy-Board,  the  Secretary 
of  the  Navy,  and  the  President. 


WHAT    CAREER?  11 

" '  And  who  is  above  the  President  ? '  I  told 
them,"  said  he,  "  that  the  people  was  above  the 
President.  But  of  that  they  could  make 
nothing." 

"  Of  that  they  could  make  nothing  ?  "  No  : 
of  that  they  could  make  nothing.  Men  trained 
under  a  pure  feudal  system,  of  which  the  late 
Japanese  government  gave  the  finest  illustra- 
tion to  our  time,  never  can  make  any  thing  of 
this  central  principle.  I  do  not  remember  any 
writer  of  note  in  England,  in  our  time,  who  has 
succeeded  in  grasping  this  idea.  The  popular 
conception  given  in  the  English  books  is,  that 
our  system  is  an  elective  monarchy  with  fixed 
periods  of  reign.  The  analogy  is  constantly 
sought  between  the  President  of  the  nation, 
and  the  king  of  a  kingdom.  There  is  no 
analogy.  The  President  is  the  servant  of  a 
sovereign.  The  king  is  a  person,  who,  however 
selected,  after  he  is  selected,  is  the  fountain  of 
honor,  and  at  least  the  arbiter  between  the 
leading  subjects.  The  distinction  between  a 
citizen  and  a  subject  is  equally  wide.  In  the 
feudal  or  European  systems,  no  man  may  do 


12  WHAT    CAREER? 

any  thing  unless  he  is  permitted.  In  the 
democratic  or  American  system,  any  man  may 
do  any  thing  unless  he  is  forbidden.  The 
difference  is  as  great  as  that  between  starlight 
and  noon.  In  Germany,  I  may  not  live  in  a 
town  twenty-four  hours  without  asking  per- 
mission of  the  police ;  I  may  not  build  a  carriage 
unless  I  have  a  permit  as  a  carriage-builder ;  I 
may  not  write  a  recipe  unless  I  am  licensed  as 
a  physician ;  I  may  not  tell  you  that  you  sung 
b  flat  instead  of  b  natural  unless  I  am  licensed 
as  a  music-teacher ;  nay,  I  may  not  preach  the 
very  gospel  of  good  tidings  unless  I  am  li- 
censed as  a  preacher.  But  in  America  I  may 
preach,  if  you  will  listen  ;  and  if  you  will  not 
listen,  I  may  preach  to  the  winds.  I  may  build 
as  many  coaches  as  I  like,  only  if  the  wheels 
are  not  round  the  people  will  not  ride  in  them. 
The  function  of  oversight  or  command  with 
us  is  in  the  hands  of  the  people,  unorganized 
and  without  form ;  while  under  those  systems 
of  government  it  belongs  to  the  political  au- 
thorities. 

From  this   it  results  that  fully  nine-tenths 


WHAT    CAREER?  13 

of  the  functions  of  political  government  in  the 
Old  World  are  retained  here  by  the  people, — 
by  the  sovereign,  —  in  his  own  hands.  Only 
one-tenth,  then,  of  the  force,  talent,  or  genius 
needed  for  political  administration  in  the  Old 
World  is  required  here  in  the  same  service. 
Whole  bureaux  or  departments  of  administra- 
tion in  the  service  of  the  Old  World  are  un- 
known in  our  arrangement,  and  only  one-tenth 
goes  there.  We  need  no  department  of  worship, 
for  the  people  administers  the  Church.  We  need, 
in  most  States,  no  department  of  the  higher 
education:  the  people  administers  the  colleges. 
Generally  speaking,  we  need  no  department  of 
commerce,  or  of  agriculture.  We  need  but  a 
small  military  bureau,  because  the  army  is  not 
one-twentieth  part  of  the  army  of  any  other  first- 
rate  power.  The  people  builds  the  railroads,  the 
steamships,  and  orders  the  agricultural  contests, 
the  rewards,  and  inventions.  Generally  speak- 
ing, we  need  no  department  of  fine  arts  or  public 
amusements.  The  people  builds  the  Museum, 
arranges  the  School  of  Art,  crowns  the  painter 
or  the  sculptor.  The  people  opens  the  Lyceum, 


14  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  Theatre,  or  the  Opera,  and  the  people  closes 

them. 

«» 

What  men  choose  still  to  call  "the  Govern- 
ment "  or  "  the  Administration "  reduces  itself 
to  what  has  a  mere  handful  of  attributes,  if  con- 
trasted with  what  Government  must  claim  in 
absolute  or  in  feudal  systems.  Let  us  not  'be 
deceived  by  the  accident  of  a  name.  Let  us 
not  suppose  that  because  we  call  the  bureaux  of 
political  administration  "the  Government,"  it 
is  only  they  who  govern.  And  let  us  not  make 
the  mistake  of  the  Old  World  critics,  of  sup- 
posing that  it  is  among  them  only  that  our 
leaders  are  to  be  found. 

II.  In  simple  society,  the  Leaders,  of  course, 
come  to  the  front,  — 

"  Of  native  impulse,  elemental  force." 

It  will  be  conceded,  I  believe,  that  this  hap- 
pened a  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  Revolutionary 
times.  The  land  had  no  lack  of  leaders  then: 
that  is  conceded.  We  are  far  enough  away 
from  those  times  to  see  who  they  were.  They 
appeared  when  they  were  wanted ;  and  they 


WHAT    CAREER?  15 

did  what  they  had  to  do.  They  led ;  and,  where 
they  led,  meu  followed.  All  this  is  the  easier 
to  see,  because  the  pretenders  —  the  men  who 
could  not  lead  —  are  clean  forgotten,  as  we  look 
back.  Time  teaches  history  well.  Time  shows 
us  the  leaders ;  and  we  need  not  distress  our- 
selves in  looking  for  the  failures. 

And  these  leaders,  whence  came  their  commis- 
sions? Samuel  Adams,  Washington,  Franklin, 
Greene,  Morris,  and  a  hundred  others  who  led 
this  land  as  it  needed  to  be  led, — what  brought 
them  forward?  Ask,  rather,  what  could  have 
kept  them  back  ?  Is  it  any  vote  of  an  Assembly 
that  directs  Samuel  Adams  to  insist,  through 
and  through,  on  Independence?  Is  it  any  he- 
reditary right  which  puts  him  in  a  position  to 
maintain  it?  He  has  that  word  to  speak:  he 
speaks,  and  men  are  compelled  to  hear.  So  of 
Washington,  so  of  Greene,  the  commanders  of 
your  armies.  No  man  will  pretend  that  it  needed 
a  commission  from  the  Assembly  of  Virginia,  or 
from  that  of  Rhode  Island,  to  make  those  men 
your  leaders  in  successful  wars.  What  changed 
Henry  Knox,  the  Boston  bookseller,  into  the 


16  WHAT    CAREER? 

engineer  in  command  of  your  artillery  ?  What 
so  taught  him  that  he 

"  Created  all  the  stores  of  war  "  ? 

Had  you  to  wait  till  such  a  man  was  born  in 
some  predestined  succession?  Or  had  you  to 
wait  till  he  was  trained  to  that  service  by  a  se- 
ries of  red-taped  and  decorous  promotions?  Not 
a  bit  of  it!  You  needed  him,  and  you  found 
him.  Your  lines  of  promotion  were  open,  so 
that  nothing  checked  him.  For  that  purpose, 
as  the  event  proved,  he  was  your  leader:  and 
the  leader  led ! 

This  is  conceded,  I  say,  for  times  of  exigency, 
of  great  trial.  "  These  are  the  days  of  mira- 
cle,"  men  say.  The  knot  deserves  solution, 
and  from  the  skies  some  god  descends.  But 
then  they  turn  to  peaceful  times,  and  they  claim 
that  the  principle  will  not  apply.  For  instance 
(and  for  this  purpose  it  is  a  very  striking  in- 
stance), men  urge  the  three  administrations 
of  the  Virginian  dynasty  of  Presidents ;  begin- 
ning with  Jefferson,  and  running  down, 

"  Fine  by  degrees,  and  miserably  less," 


WHAT    CAREER?  17 

till  it  ends  with  James  Monroe.  Or,  if  you 
please  to  make  a  point  even  finer,  you  may  taper 
it  with  the  reign  of  John  Tyler.  And  sceptics 
say  to  you,  "Are  these  your  leaders?  Where 
did  they  lead  you  ?  "  Well,  it  is  true  that,  of 
the  last  two  persons  I  have  named,  most  men 
in  this  assembly  perhaps  would  say  nothing,  — 
good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  —  simply  because  men 
remember  nothing  about  them  and  have  nothing 
to  say.  Nay,  it  is  true,  I  suppose,  that  Jefferson 
himself  had  made  his  last  gift  to  the  people  of 
this  land,  when  he  had  well  announced  the  prin- 
ciple I  am  maintaining,  —  namely,  that  to  the 
people  as  sovereign  may  well  be  entrusted,  with- 
out intermediate  delegation,  by  far  the  largest 
share  of  the  people's  own  affairs.  Grant  then  — 
what  I  suppose  is  true — that  for  four  and  twenty 
years  at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  from 
1801  to  1825,  the  so-called  heads  of  this  nation 
led  it  in  no  direction.  Grant  that  neither  of 
these  three  Presidents  has  proved  in  fact  to  be  a 
leader.  Grant  that  no  principle  for  which  they 
struggled  has  proved  to  be  worth  a  straw,  and 
that  every  measure  for  which  they  contended  has 


18  WHAT    CAREER? 

proved  to  be  a  vanity.  The  one  great  event  of 
Jefferson's  reign,  the  acquisition  of  Louisiana, 
is  no  work  of  his  policy.  It  was  the  suggestion 
and  the  work  of  no  less  a  man  than  Napoleon 
Bonaparte. 

"  I  have  given  England  a  rival,"  he  said  to 
Marbois,  when  he  signed  the  act  of  cession. 

All  this  is  simply  to  grant  that  the  chief 
servants  of  the  people,  in  those  four  and  twenty 
years,  were  not  its  leaders.  Is  that  so  strange  ? 
Are  wise  men  often  led  by  their  servants? 
Were  not  the  people  led  all  the  same  ?  Why,  in 
those  very  years,  here  was  Eli  Whitney  leading 
them  in  the  development  of  the  new  product,  cot 
ton,  which  gave  to  this  little  line  of  sea-board 
colonies  (for  they  were  still  such)  the  great  coun- 
terpoise in  the  necessary  exchanges  of  the  world. 
Here  were  such  leaders  as  Hopkins,  of  Newport, 
and  Emmons,  of  Franklin,  at  work  in  their 
Spartan  studies,  leading  the  speculation  of  the 
men  of  thought  and  of  religion  over  the  land, 
as  they  weighed  out  in  their  balances  the  very  at- 
tributes of  the  Almighty.  Here  again  was  Rob- 
ert Fulton  leading  it  steadily  forward,  though 


WHAT    CAREER?  19 

the  land  did  not  know  that  it  was  led,  by  his  per- 
sistency in  his  great  invention,  without  which, 
indeed,  that  whole  purchase  of  Louisiana  was 
almost  valueless,  —  an  invention  which,  in  its 
application  there  alone,  called  into  existence 
half  a  continent,  whose  harvests  this  day  feed 
half  a  world.  Such  men  as  Allston  were  lead- 
ing the  country  to  triumphs  of  art.  Such  men 
as  Andrew  Jackson  were  leading  the  Western 
pioneers,  and  teaching  them  the  terrible  might 
of  this  land  for  war.  Such  men  as  Chamiing 
were  opening  a  new  page  before  men's  eyes  as 
to  the  relations  of  man  with  God,  and  God 
with  man ;  were  leading  men 

"  Nearer,  my  God,  to  thee." 

Could  a  land  be  better  led?  And  who 
named  these  leaders?  What  commission  did 
they  need  from  this  or  that  Board  of  returns  ? 
What  herald's  certificate  did  they  need  of  their 
hereditary  right  to  command?  They  led,  be- 
cause they  were  leaders.  And  where  they  led, 
men  followed ! 

It  is  the-  custom  of  our  time,  —  I  am  sorry  to 


20  WHAT    CAREER? 

say  that  it  is  the  custom  of  occasions  like  this,  — 
to  lament  that  the  scholars  and  men  of  letters 
of  the  country  are  not  placed  in  places  of  politi- 
cal administration.  Has  the  history  of  the 
country  showed  that  it  needed  its  first  ability 
at  Washington?  Were  such  men  as  I  have 
named,  —  such  men  as  Whitney  and  Fulton, 
such  men  as  Channing  and  Hopkins,  —  wasted 
because  they  were  not  in  the  Senate  or  in  the 
Cabinet  ?  Take  such  a  life  as  that  of  Francis 
Wayland,  who  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  directed 
the  education  of  thousands  of  young  men  in 
Brown  University:  will  any  one  seriously  say 
that  it  would  be  better  for  this  country  to-day,  if 
he  had  spent  those  years  in  the  Senate  chamber 
at  Washington  ?  May  I  not  ask,  even  in  this 
presence,  without  impropriety,  whether  such  a 
name  as  that  of  Mark  Hopkins  will  not  go 
down  to  posterity  with  fresher  laurels  and  with 
more  certainty  of  fame,  because  he  has  been  the 
foster-father  of  the  pupils  of  this  Alma  Mater, 
than  it  would  have  earned  in  any  forensic  strug- 
gles, or  in  any  legislative  arena?  Or,  in  one 
word,  is  this  people  short-sighted?  Men  are 


WHAT    CAREER?  21 

apt  to  say  that  they  are  too  shrewd.  Does  not 
this  people  know  where  it  most  needs  service  ? 
And  if  we  find  that  great  men,  unselfish  men, 
thoughtful  men,  and  men  of  genius,  —  men  of 
a  pure  ambition,  and  of  strong  resolve,  —  do  not 
choose  the  career  of  administration  for  their 
career,  have  we  not  reason  to  think  that  they 
know  the  field  of  fame  and  the  field  of  duty  as 
well  as  we  do  ? 

Let  me  adduce  a  single  instance  of  a  single 
detail  of  administration,  which  has  proved  of 
great  importance.  The  system  of  the  issues  of 
bank-notes  in  this  country  requires  that  their 
amount  shall  be  regulated  by  a  deposit  of  gov- 
ernment stocks,  not  held  by  the  bank  officers, 
but  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  public  adminis- 
tration. This  principle,  first  tried  in  New  York 
in  1838,  was  copied  in  many  other  States,  and 
borrowed  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  England,  in 
1844.  It  is  now  the  basis  of  the  National  Bank 
circulation  of  America.  Who  is  the  author  of 
it  ?  The  author  was  the  President  of  Columbia 
College,  who  proposed  it  in  his  lectures  to  his 
seniors,  and  demonstrated  its  fitness.  One  of 


22  WHAT    CAEEER? 

those  seniors  afterwards  introduced  it  into  the 
legislation  of  New  York.  From  the  system  of 
New  York  it  passed  into  the  legislation  of  the 
world.  The  improvement  was  needed,  and  it 
came.  Can  you  suggest  any  possible  system 
for  the  choice  of  your  rulers,  in  which  it  should 
have  come  more  easily  ? 

III.  It  will  happen,  of  course,  that  there  come 
crises  of  importance,  when  the  political  admin- 
istration is  the  pivot  on  which  all  interests  turn, 
and  the  welfare  of  the  country  hinges.  Wisdom, 
and  the  first  wisdom ;  prudence,  and  the  first 
prudence  ;  courage  God-born,  —  is  then  needed 
by  the  officers  in  that  service.  Never  fear,  when 
that  moment  comes,  but  that  they  will  watch 
the  people,  and  obey  the  Leaders  of  the  people, 
whether  the  Leaders  be  in  this  office  or  in  that, 
or  in  none  ;  whether  they  wear  this,  that,  or  an- 
other crown  of  honor.  What  is  Abraham  Lin- 
coln's great  honor,  but  that  he  understood  the 
instincts  of  the  American  people,  knew  what 
it  wanted,  what  it  meant,  and  what  it  would 
do  ?  In  point  of  fact,  you  find  pessimism  and 


WHAT    CAREER?   .  23 

despair  among  those  persons  who  see  least  of 
the  real  people  of  this  land.  The  men  who 
see  only  the  drunken  class  of  foreigners  in  Bos- 
ton, in  New  York  and  Chicago,  may  well  be  in 
doubt  as  to  our  political  institutions.  But  you 
will  notice  that  that  doubt  is  never  shared  by  the 
men  who  meet,  whether  on  the  stump  or  in  daily 
converse,  the  freeholders  of  the  Western  States, 
—  the  men  who  have  made  their  own  houses, 
their  own  farms,  their  own  schools,  their  own 
churches,  their  own  laws.  They  know  that 
such  men  will  make  their  own  officers,  and  will 
unmake  them. 

Yes,  and  more  than  this :  those  officers,  when 
made,  be  the  name  President,  Senator,  Secre- 
tary, chief  clerk,  or  under  clerk;  be  he  head 
of  a  bureau,  or  the  lowest  messenger  boy  of  a 
porter,  —  those  officers  listen  obediently,  take  to 
heart,  digest,  and  obey  the  directions  of  the 
Leaders  of  the  people,  be  those  Leaders  where 
they  may.  It  is  some  unknown  penman  in  his 
closet ;  it  is  some  Lowell  singing  a  song ;  it  is 
some  Emerson  dreaming  a  dream ;  it  is  some 
Moody  moving  a  multitude  ;  it  is  some  Tom 


24  WHAT    CAREER? 

Scott  annihilating  time;  it  is  some  Sampson 
organizing  emigration ;  it  is  some  Phillips  on  a 
rostrum ;  or  it  is  Mark  Hopkins  in  this  pulpit. 
The  officer  of  the  administration  sits  at  the  centre 
where  a  thousand  mirrors  reflect,  where  a  thou- 
sand telephones  repeat  the  words,  and,  like  the 
obedient  genie  when  Aladdin  rubs  his  lamp,  the 
officer  of  administration  starts  up,  to  say,  — 

"  I   HEAR,   AND   I   OBEY." 

IV.  Gentlemen,  I  will  not  leave  this  subject, 
addressing  as  I  do  the  chosen  representatives 
of  so  many  of  the  most  favored  young  men  of 
the  Northern  States,  without  offering  a  word 
to  them  of  practical  suggestion.  Take  it,  in 
Alpha  Delta  Phi,  as  the  counsel  of  an  older 
brother. 

In  this  business  of  the  choice  of  a  career, 
which  occupies  you  already,  you  will  defer  to 
the  last  possible  moment  mere  study  for  your 
specialty.  A  specialty  there  must  be  at  last, 
but  put  off  as  long  as  you  may  your  special 
preparation.  Distrust  all  charlatans  who  tell 
you  that  they  have  a  patent  process  to  fit  you 


WHAT    CAREER?  25 

for  any  one  career  in  life,  —  whether  they  call  it 
a  Commercial  College,  a  Normal  School,  or  a 
double-conibination-refined  Elective,  —  without 
broad  Liberal  Culture  as  the  basis.  Do  not 
listen  to  the  man  who  advises  you  to  go  into 
the  business  of  making  weather-cocks  and 
steeples  for  churches,  without  building  towers, 
and  walls,  and  strong  crypts,  and  foundations 
underground. 

Then,  when  the  profession  is  chosen,  and 
prepared  for,  consecrate  yourself  to  God  as  his 
servant  in  it,  that  its  work  shall  be  done  well. 
"  Be  3^6  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  who  is  in 
heaven  is  perfect."  That  is  the  rule.  Whether 
you  open  a  copper  mine  in  Michigan ;  whether 
you  plough  and  sow  and  harvest  a  thousand 
acres  in  Illinois ;  whether  you  organize  labor, 
and  make  cosmos  out  of  chaos  in  Louisiana; 
whether  you  preach  the  gospel  of  Christ  in 
some  lonely  village  in  the  mountains ;  whether 
you  wait  for  clients  who  will  not  come,  but 
prepare,  while  you  are  waiting,  to  unravel  the 
knot  of  Gordius  himself,  —  whatever  you  do, 
do  that  work  well.  Do  it  as  a  Leader  does  it. 
2 


26  WHAT    CAREER? 

This  country  has  founded  these  colleges,  it  has 
endowed  these  professorships,  it  has  selected 
you  to  be  students,  that  you  may  be  its  edu- 
cated leaders.  Gentlemen,  do  not  be  false  to 
her !  Lead  you  will,  if  lead  you  can.  See  that 
you  are  leaders,  by  doing  well  what  you  have 
to  do. 

I  do  not  say  that  you  are  to  avoid  what  is 
called  Public  Life.  I  say  you  are  to  enter  one 
of  its  duties  or  another,  as  it  may  happen.  For 
the  truth  is  that  you  are  in  it,  of  course,  if  you 
do  your  duty.  Men,  trained  as  you  are,  speak 
easily  when  you  have  any  thing  to  say.  God 
forbid  that  else  you  should  speak  at  all !  Men, 
trained  as  you  are,  write  simply  what  you  have 
to  teach.  It  is  your  fault  then,  so  far,  if  the 
Press,  where  you  live,  falters,  or  does  not  say 
what  it  might  do.  A  free  press,  and  an  open 
rostrum,  is  the  privilege  of  course  of  every 
educated  American  gentleman.  Whoever  else 
in  this  world  complains  that  he  cannot  move 
men  as  he  should,  it  is  not  men  to  whom  are 
open  avenues  like  these. 

Do  well  what  you  do.     And  do  it  conscious 


WHAT    CAREER?  27 

that  you  ought  to  be  Leaders  among  men,  It 
is  said  to  be  the  privilege  of  the  young  Ameri- 
can that  he  may  be  what  Miltiades  was,  and 
Alcibiades,  —  a  founder  of  a  State,  if  he  choose. 
Gentlemen,  this  founding  of  a  State  does  not 
require  us  to  cross  the  mountains.  Wherever 
our  lot  is  thrown,  we  may  dig  deep  for  the 
foundations,  and  build  solidly  the  walls  of  the 
institutions  which  are  to  stand.  And  whether 
our  names  perish  or  are  remembered,  such  in- 
stitutions, in  the  days  that  are  to  come,  will  be 
the  monuments  to  those  who  come  after  us, 
that  these  men  builded  well ! 

And,  above  all,  do  not  blow  your  own  trum- 
pets ;  nor,  which  is  the  same  thing,  ask  other 
people  to  blow  them.  No  trumpeter  ever  rose 
to  be  a  general.  If  the  power  to  lead  is  in  you, 
other  men  will  follow.  If  it  is  not  in  you, 
nothing  will  make  them  follow.  It  is  for  you 
to  find  the  eternal  law  of  this  universe,  and  to 
put  yourself  in  harmony  with  that  law.  Speak- 
ing more  simply,  it  is  to  find  God,  and  to  work 
as  fellow-laborer  with  Him.  Do  that,  and  you 
may  afford  to  be  indifferent,  who  else  works 
with  you. 


28 


'  Self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control : 
These  three  alone  lead  men  to  sovereign  power ! 
Yet  not  for  power :  power  of  itself  would  come 
Uncalled  for.    But  to  live  by  law, 
Acting  the  law  we  live  by,  without  fear  ; 
And,  because  right  is  right,  to  follow  right, — 
Were  wisdom  in  the  spite  of  consequence." 


WHAT    CAREER?  29 

II. 

THE    SPECIALTIES. 

TOHN  MILTON  returned  to  England,  from 
his  foreign  travels,  just  as  England  was  on 
the  edge  of  civil  war.  In  France  and  in  Italy 
he  had  been  welcomed  with  enthusiasm.  He 
had  been  fairly  petted  by  scholars ;  he  had  been 
jealously  watched  by  cat-like  inquisitors,  afraid 
that  he  was  budding  heresies  into  the  true  vine  ; 
he  had  been  serenaded  by  musicians  ;  he  had 
been  sung  by  poets ;  he  had  been  beloved  by  all. 
But  Milton  would  not  stay  to  be  petted  or  flat- 
tered. The  thunders  growled  in  the  horizon  of 
England ;  the  batteries  were  builded  which  were 
to  open  on  the  English  Sumter ;  and  the  true 
Englishman  knew,  the  true  Christian  knew,  that 
in  such  an  exigency  his  place  was  home.  He 
left  sunny  Italy  for  foggy  London ;  left  flattery 
to  find  abuse ;  left  play  for  work,  and  work  the 
hardest.  He  had  been  graduated  at  the  uni- 


30  WHAT    CAEEER? 

versity  a  few  years  before.  I  may  say  that, 
when  he  turned  his  back  upon  Italy,  his  last 
vacation  was  over,  and  the  real  commencement 
of  his  life  had  come. 

I  may,  then,  fairly  allude  to  his  life  as  an 
illustration  for  some  inquiries  which  we  will 
make  as  to  liberal  study,  such  as  that  to  which 
the  readers  of  this  book  devote  themselves. 
Here  is  the  man  on  the  whole  most  distinguished 
among  men  of  our  race,  if,  in  our  estimate  of 
distinction,  we  are  to  give  a  fair  estimate  to  per- 
sonal purity,  to  moral  greatness,  and  to  intel- 
lectual power.  Of  all  men  who  have  spoken 
our  language,  Shakspeare  and  Milton  are  the 
two  whose  loss,  if  we  can  conceive  of  it,  would 
be  the  most  fatal;  and,  of  these  two,  John 
Milton  is  the  man  who,  in  thought  and  action, 
in  character,  in  politics,  in  his  hope  and  effort 
for  the  coming-in  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  — 
say,  in  one  word,  in  his  religion,  —  represents 
the  idea  and  the  prophecy  most  dear  to  America, 
and  especially  to  young  America.  Some  illus- 
trations drawn  from  that  master  life  ought  to  be 
of  use  to  young  America  to-day. 


WHAT    CAREER?  31 

John  Milton  was  the  first  scholar  of  his  time ; 
he  was  the  first  theologian  of  his  time ;  he  was 
the  first  statesman  of  his  time  ;  he  was  the  first 
poet  of  his  time. 

He  was  the  first  scholar  of  his  time.  When 
Charles  the  Second,  fleeing  into  exile,  wished  to 
establish  his  cause  before  Europe,  he  retained 
the  person  then  accredited  as  the  first  man  of 
letters  in  Europe,  Claude  de  Saumaise,  to  write 
out  the  justification  of  Charles  I.,  his  father. 
At  the  order  of  the  Parliament,  Milton  replied. 
He  rode  over  Saumaise  in  their  tournament,  as 
Charlemagne  or  Roland  would  have  ridden  down 
and  ridden  over  Don  Quixote.  And  the  name 
of  the  showy  scholar,  who  knew,  men  said,  every 
thing  worth  knowing,  exists  to-day  in  the  drear- 
iest corner  of  the  dreariest  cyclopaedia,  only 
because  Milton  honored  him  with  a  reply. 

Milton  was  the  first  theologian  of  his  time. 
Not  even  his  friends  who  made  the  Westminster 
Confession ;  not  even  such  sweet  spirits  as  Her- 
bert and  Vaughan  and  Chillingworth  and  Taylor, 
who  in  an  opposing  camp  showed  their  unity  of 
the  spirit  with  those  who  overthrew  the  crown 


32  WHAT    CAREER? 

and  the  throne  ;  not  Hooker,  Baxter,  and  Law ; 
nor,  on  our  side  the  water,  not  any  Cotton  or 
Davenport  or  Mather  or  Williams  of  them  all, 
—  have  so  held  the  faith  of  the  world,  have  so 
swayed  its  devotion  or  so  guided  its  prayer,  as  he 
who  invoked  the  Holy  Spirit  for  his  muse,  and 
taught  all  men  the  music  of  the  first  evening 
hymn. 

Looking  back  upon  it  all,  we  have  a  right  to 
say  he  was  the  first  statesman  of  his  time. 
Cromwell  and  the  rest  were  trained  in  that 
rough  school  of  statesmanship  which  does  not 
miss  its  mark.  Like  our  own  dear  Abraham 
Lincoln,  when  the  common  sense  of  the  people 
pushed  them  on,  they  found  out  how  to  lead. 
There  was  no  lack  of  will,  and  they  found  out 
the  way.  But  when  they  had  to  defend  in  let- 
ters the  work  that  they  had  done ;  when,  as 
against  a  defeated  church,  or  a  throne  over- 
turned, they  had  to  justify  in  eternal  argument 
their  cause,  —  whom  had  they  to  turn  to  but 
John  Milton? 

That  he  was  the  first  poet  of  his  time,  the 
world  allows.  There  are  not  wanting  those  who 
say  he  was  the  first  poet  of  all  time. 


WHAT    CAREER?  33 

Now,  what  was  the  training  which  stood  Mil- 
ton in  stead  for  service  so  various  to  the  world  ? 
What  were  the  early  studies  wKich  laid  the 
foundation  for  work  so  distinguished,  —  work  in 
lines  so  different,  which  was,  however,  work  so 
bravely,  nay,  so  completely  done?  There  are 
ugly  proverbs  which  say  that  a  "Jack  at  all 
trades  works  ill  at  all."  That  may  be  true  of 
trades :  clearly  it  is  not  true  of  the  nobler  range 
of  service.  How  was  Milton  trained  in  boyhood 
and  in  youth,  that,  when  a  man,  he  might  serve 
his  country  and  his  God,  whether  as  advocate, 
whether  as  theologian,  whether  as  statesman  or 
as  poet?  The  answer  is  in  familiar  words.  As 
boy  and  youth,  thanks  to  a  fond  father's  wis- 
dom, Milton  had  the  most  generous,  the  broadest 
culture  England  or  Europe  had  to  give.  He  en- 
joyed what  we  rightly  call  a  liberal  education. 

The  world  was  then  what  it  is  now,  in  the 
habit  of  men's  minds  and  in  the  drift  of  their 
ambitions.  There  is  no  doubt,  therefore,  that 
John  Milton  and  his  father  were  surrounded  with 
people  who  advised  Borne  other  training.  They  , 

2* 


34  WHAT    CAREER? 

urged,  I  do  not  doubt,  what  people  now  call  a 
specialty ;  that  this  young  man  should  be  early 
trained  to  some  special  pursuit,  trade,  or  calling. 
As  time  passed  on,  I  do  not  doubt  that  they 
pointed  out  the  success,  the  brilliant  success,  of 
this  or  that  specialist,  as  illustrative  of  the  value 
of  their  counsel.  The  chief  contractor  who 
made  Cromwell's  powder,  for  instance  (there 
must  have  been  such  a  man,  though  history  has 
forgotten  him),  —  the  master  manufacturer  who 
made  the  powder  which  Cromwell's  soldiers 
kept  so  dry,  and  burned  to  so  much  purpose, — 
was,  doubtless,  in  the  London  of  that  day,  a  per- 
son of  more  mark  and  note  than  John  Milton. 
He  had  wrought  on  his  specialty,  and  had 
wrought  on  it  well.  He  had  made  a  good  con- 
tract, he  made  good  powder,  and  he  got  good 
pay.  History  has  forgotten  him ;  but  I  dare  re- 
construct history  so  far  as  to  say  that  I  am  sure 
he  rode  in  his  carriage,  while  Milton  went  afoot ; 
that  his  wife  had  laces  and  silks  fit  for  an  em- 
press, while  Milton's  wife  spread  thin  butter  on 
thick  bread  for  hungry  schoolboys.  I  think  the 
powder-contractor  and  the  poet  may  have  known 
each  other  at  school.  I  think  he  may  have. 


WHAT    CAREER  ?  35 

nodded  good-naturedly  to  Milton,  as  they  met 
some  day  at  the  government  offices  ;  and  I  can 
hear  the  contractor  saying  to  himself,  with  con- 
temptuous pity ;  "  That  is  what  comes  of  the 
classics  and  the  mathematics,  Christ  College  and 
the  university ;  and  my  coach  and  four  here  are 
what  came  of  my  specialty."  Yet,  for  all  that, 
if  we  had  to  choose  between  the  two  lines  for 
son  of  ours,  we  should  not  choose  the  special 
training ;  we  should  choose  the  liberal  education. 
For  we  should  say :  "  It  is  perfectly  certain 
that  the  powder  manufacturing  will  be  done  ;  it 
is  not  perfectly  certain  that,  without  watchful 
care  and  delicate  nursing,  the  world  will  get  its 
science,  its  statesmanship,  its  theolog3r,  or  its 
poetry."  About  the  methods  in  life  there  need 
be  no  fear.  The  doubt  and  danger  are  about 
the  principles  on  which  all  methods  depend. 
The  methods  of  life  are  all  that  the  specialist 
fully  learns.  The  man  of  liberal  education  is 
studying  its  principles. 

It  is  unquestionably  true  that,  with  the  im- 
mense enlargement  of  human  knowledge,  the 


36  WHAT    CAREER? 

several  sciences  part  so  widely  that  no  man  can 
pretend  to  master  them  all ;  and  only  the  merest 
charlatan  professes  the  knowledge  of  the  detail 
of  every  vocation.  Still  it  is  as  true  as  ever, 
first,  that  all  science  involves  a  kno\vledge  of 
fundamental  and  essential  principles,  and  that 
the  man  who  is  not  trained  and  habituated  in 
these  will  be  a  mere  dabster  and  empiric,  even 
in  the  method  of  the  special  science  which  he 
has  chosen.  It  is  true,  again,  that  each  science 
is  to  be  investigated  and  explained  by  the  same 
eternal  laws  of  truth  and  methods  of  reasoning 
as  every  other ;  and  the  specialist  who  under- 
takes to  study  or  to  teach  without  habit  and 
experience  in  these  laws  of  truth  and  methods 
of  reasoning,  breaks  down  again  as  dabster  and 
pretender.  Once  more,  it  is  true  that,  as  the 
unity  of  Nature  asserts  itself,  and  the  correlation 
of  one  force  with  another,  that  man  succeeds 
best  in  interpreting  Nature  in  one  of  her  phases 
who  can  best  interpret  her  in  another.  This  is 
the  man  who,  from  the  breadth  of  his  education, 
can  tell  something  of  the  harmony  of  things,  of 
the  cosmos  of  the  universe.  He  succeeds  in  his 


WHAT    CAEEER?  37 

specialty  just  in  proportion  to  the  breadth  of  his 
general  education. 

Yet  it  is  necessary  to  say  this,  and  to  illustrate 
it  by  such  memories  as  those  which  tell  us  to 
what  education  we  owe  John  Milton,  and  how 
great  the  loss  would  have  been  had  we  special- 
ized him  into  a  scrivener ;  because,  in  the  rush 
of  our  time,  even  the  colleges  and  universities 
have  been  invaded,  and  the  old  narrowness  of 
the  specialty  is  here  and  there  proclaimed  anew, 
as  if  it  were  some  new  discovery  in  education. 

When  we  come  to  examine  this  tempting  and 
specious  proposal,  does  it  amount  to  any  thing 
more  than  the  old  temptation,  that  the  child  of 
God  shall  use  the  heavenly  power  God  has  given 
him  by  setting  it  to  make  bread  out  of  stones  ? 

What  do  we  say  of  the  same  proposal  when  it 
is  presented  a  little  earlier  in  men's  lives  ? 

In  my  own  home,  the  city  of  Boston,  there  is 
an  annual  expenditure  for  the  education  of  chil- 
dren of  about  a  million  and  a  half  of  dollars. 
The  poorest  child  may  take  the  advantage  of 
this  expenditure  till  he  is  eighteen  years  of  age ; 
and  the  methods  are  so  arranged  that  he  may, 


38  WHAT    CAREER? 

if  he  choose,  enter  with  good  instruction  on 
many  of  the  lines  of  study  pursued  in  most 
colleges.  In  spite  of  this  generous  provision, 
however,  the  larger  part  of  the  children  leave 
school  before  they  are  twelve  years  old.  They 
do  this  that  they  may  acquire  certain  specialties. 
It  is  now  the  specialty  of  selling  lozenges,  or 
matches ;  it  is  now  the  specialty  of  leasing 
opera-glasses  for  the  evening ;  it  is  now  the 
specialty  of  what  is  called  a  cash-boy  in  a  large 
retail  store.  It  is  not  an  apprenticeship,  which 
educates  a  boy  for  higher  life :  at  twelve,  he  is 
too  young  for  that.  It  is  only  a  specialty  which 
enables  him  to  earn,  week  by  week,  about  as 
much  as  will  pay  for  his  food. 

When  we  see  this  in  the  case  of  the  little  boy 
or  girl,  we  all  regret  it.  There  is  then  no  ques- 
tion that  the  decision  of  the  parents  is  wrong. 
By  all  means  in  our  hands  we  attempt  to  change 
that  decision.  In  Boston,  we  are  at  this  mo- 
ment trying  to  introduce  into  the  school  system 
such  technical  education  in  sewing,  in  carpentry, 
and  other  useful  arts,  as  may  persuade  short- 
sighted parents  to  keep  their  children  at  school 


WHAT    CAREER?  39 

a  little  longer ;  for  we  think  even  half  a  loaf  is 
better  than  no  bread.  We  do  not  do  this  be- 
cause we  like  to  do  it :  we  accept  it  as  the  neces- 
sity forced  upon  us  by  the  determination  of 
ignorant  parents  to  gain  the  immediate  return 
of  bread  and  butter  for  the  education  which  is 
given  to  their  children.  We  see  that  the  longer 
we  can  put  off  the  acquisition  of  the  specialty, 
the  better. 

This  principle,  which  is  acknowledged  by  all 
in  the  case  of  boys  and  girls,  loses  none  of  its 
force  when  it  is  applied  in  the  lives  of  young 
men  and  young  women.  Of  course,  in  civilized 
life,  each  man,  sooner  or  later,  must  have  his 
special  training  in  the  service  which  he  is  to 
render.  But  the  precise  object  for  which  we 
have  founded  colleges  is  to  give  the  liberal  and 
broad  foundation  on  which  that  training  is  to 
be  based.  And  the  rule  of  life  might  be  stated, 
almost  without  an  exception,  that  the  longer  the 
special  training  could  be  postponed,  so  the  gen- 
erous preparation  were  still  in  progress,  the  bet- 
ter for  the  man,  and  the  better  for  mankind. 

The  fine  and  analytic  division  of  labor  for 


40  WHAT    CAREER? 

which  the  specialist  pleads,  results,  he  thinks, 
in  a  certain  improvement  in  the  quantity  or  the 
quality  of  the  world's  manufacture.  If  one 
man  always  does  one  thing,  and  another  man 
always  does  another  thing,  each  man  growing 
perfect  in  his  specialty,  the  result  will  be,  we 
are  told,  better  pins  in  your  pin-factory,  more 
sheetings  from  your  majestic  mills,  finer  type 
for  your  newspapers,  and  Remington  rifles  more 
highly  finished  in  your  armories.  All  this  is 
very  possible.  But  the  argument  forgets  that 
this  world  was  not  created  for  the  manufacture 
of  pins,  of  sheetings,  of  newspapers,  or  of  rifles : 
it  was  created  for  the  training  of  men.  And 
the  man  is  made  more  perfect  and  more,  not  by 
his  deftness  in  this  handicraft,  or  his  knack  in 
that  trade  ;  but  as  one  part  of  his  being  is  thor- 
oughly wrought  in  with  another  part,  body  with 
mind,  and  mind  with  soul. 

The  great  modern  patron  of  that  system  of 
industry  which  makes  each  man  do  what  he  can 
do  cheapest,  and  divides  labor  so  that  one  man 
shall  make  the  heads  of  pins  perfectly,  and  shall 
be  capable  of  nothing  else ;  that  another  man 


WHAT    CAREER?  41 

shall  point  them  perfectly,  and  be  fit  for  nothing 
else,  —  is  Adam  Smith.  It  might  be  enough  to 
say  that,  if  Adam  Smith's  theory  could  have 
been  properly  carried  out,  he  would  have  spent 
his  life,  not  in  writing  treatises  of  political  econ- 
omy, but  in  fishing  for  herrings  on  the  shore  of 
Scotland:  that  being  the  industry  for  which 
Nature  seems  to  have  best  fitted  that  region,  had 
not  the  restrictions  of  government  or  civiliza- 
tion introduced  other  life  there.  Adam  Smith 
is  himself,  then,  an  illustration  how  much  the 
world  gains  when  the  boy  or  the  man  is  trained 
to  some  broader  and  higher  life  than  the  mere 
specialty  to  which  circumstances,  or  what  people 
call  "  nature,"  would  have  directed  him.  Have 
we  not,  in  our  own  history,  had  instances,  — 
instances  enough,  to  teach  us  what  the  country 
gains  by  training  its  citizens  in  the  broader  cul- 
ture? Like  the  old  Greek  culture,  it  enables 
them  to  turn  to  any  service.  What  is  the  whole 
tenor  of  the  history  of  the  war?  Who  were 
our  diplomatists,  —  our  Adams,  and  Marsh,  and 
Motley?  They  were  men  who  had  been  trained 
in  the  broader  culture,  and  took  up  the  specialty 


42  WHAT    CAREER? 

of  diplomacy  as  a  matter  of  course,  just  as 
Themistocles  led  a  fleet  without  having  been 
trained  to  the  specialty  of  a  sailor.  The  special 
accomplishment,  indeed,  is  only  charlatanism, 
when  it  is  not  based  on  knowledge  of  the  prin- 
ciple employed.  Such  is  the  rule-of-thumb 
reckoning  of  the  seaman  who  does  not  know 
why  his  latitudes  and  longitudes  come  right, 
and  is  wholly  the  slave  of  his  process. 

It  was  my  fortune,  once,  to  sit  for  several 
days  by  the  side  of  the  late  Governor  Andrew, 
of  Massachusetts,  while,  with  skill  and  success 
which  I  will  not  pretend  to  describe,  he  presided 
over  a  large,  excited  assembly,  which,  but  for 
his  admirable  gift,  would  have  been  stormy. 
When  all  was  done,  I  ventured  to  felicitate  him 
on  his  success.  "  I  think  I  have  succeeded,"  said 
he  ;  "  and  I  believe  it  is  because,  in  all  my  life, 
I  have  only  for  three  or  four  hours  been  in  the 
chair  of  any  assembly.  I  believe  it  is  because 
I  know  nothing  of  the  technics  of  parliamentary 
law.  I  mean,"  he  added,  with  earnestness, 
"  that  I  have  been  trying  all  through  these  days 
to  apply  the  principles  of  justice,  of  truth,  and 


WHAT    CAREER?  43 

common  sense,  in  the  forms,  which  were  of 
course  familiar  to  me,  of  deliberative  assem- 
blies." I  could  not  but  contrast  that  verdict 
with  the  verdict  of  my  distinguished  kinsman, 
John  P.  Hale,  who  stood  with  me  one  day,  in 
the  gallery  at  the  Capitol,  as  an  acute  parlia- 
mentarian, —  who  has  thus  far  never  been  any 
thing  but  an  acute  parliamentarian,  —  dissected 
some  point  of  order  to  the  bottom.  "  I  would 
not,"  said  Mr.  Hale,  "  know  as  much  as  that 
man  knows  of  parliamentary  law,  —  no,  not  if 
you  gave  me  the  world !  "  Take  that  as  a  not 
unfair  contrast  of  the  difference  between  prin- 
ciple and  method,  if,  by  any  misfortune,  either 
must  be  learned  alone. 

The  man  who  does  not  understand  the  prin- 
ciple will  constantly  be  blundering  in  his  method. 
The  amusing  stories  of  the  blunders  of  the  ac- 
curate Chinese  imitators  are  illustrations.  But 
more  than  this,  and  worse  than  this,  the  spe- 
cialist who  has  not  laid  a  generous  foundation 
for  his  art  cannot  explain  it  to  another ;  cannot 
wisely  conduct  the  experiments  for  advancing 
it:  he  can  only  repeat  the  processes  to  which 


44  WHAT    CAREER? 

he  himself  is  bred.  The  hackneyed  anecdote 
says  that  Mansfield  told  the  Indian  judge,  who 
had  not  been  trained  in  the  principles  of  law,  to 
make  his  decisions  boldly,  and  they  would  be 
right ;  but  to  beware  how  he  gave  his  reasons, 
for  they  would  surely  be  wrong.  Precisely  so : 
the  mere  specialist  cannot  give  his  reasons.  He 
has  to  work  by  a  recipe  ;  and  what  becomes  of 
such  work?  It  was  such  work  which  the  arti- 
sans of  old  time  wrought  in.  —  in  the  lost  arts, 
— over  whose  monuments  we  are  left  to  wonder. 
Such  workmen  learned  the  process,  but  they 
were  powerless  to  explain  the  principle  ;  so  the 
abiding  or  eternal  element  was  gone.  The  sci- 
ence ceased  to  be  a  science  :  it  became  an  art,  a 
knack,  a  secret,  a  memory,  a  shadow,  —  and 
then  was  gone  for  ever. 

Of  modern  science,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
glory  is,  that  it  is  built  up  on  certain  eternal 
principles  which  have  found  their  formulas  in 
what  we  call  laws.  A  knowledge  of  these  laws 
leads  to  the  true  experiment,  and  to  the  simpli- 
fying of  science.  All  true  science  is  seeking  to 
make  science  simpler  and  simpler :  it  is  seeking 


WHAT    CAREER?  45 

to  find  the  general  principle  of  which  these  spe- 
cial arts  are  only  the  illustrations.  The  great- 
est victory  of  modern  science  —  the  correlation 
of  physical  forces  —  is  an  exquisite  instance 
of  the  answer  given  to  men  who  were  able  to 
interrogate  Nature,  not  with  one  but  with  many 
questions.  And  the  bold  suggestions  and  fasci- 
nating generalizations  of  the  most  distinguished 
naturalists  of  our  time, — -of  the  Darwins  and 
Huxleys  and  Tyndalls,  —  are  gifts  to  us  from 
minds  which  have  been  trained,  not  in  one  line 
of  research,  nor  in  two,  but  in  many :  I  might 
almost  say  in  all.  Their  generalization  takes 
its  value  from  the  range  of  their  observation. 
Then  the  statement  of  it  is  intelligible,  because 
they  have  not  disregarded  intellectual  sciences 
of  analysis,  of  investigation,  and  of  argument. 
And,  once  more,  their  methods  are  intelligible 
because  there  is,  and  they  know  there  is,  a  prin- 
ciple behind. 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  for  all  these 
reasons,  we  should  be  glad  in  every  case  to  post- 
pone the  training  for  the  specialty  as  long  as 
possible.  We  are  to  make  the  studies  in  prep- 


46  WHAT    CAREER? 

aration  for  it  broad  enough  to  train  every  fac- 
ulty of  body,  mind,  or  soul.  It  is  only  in  the 
lowest  grades  of  life  that  we  do  not  find  fault 
with  the  absence  of  either  side  of  such  training. 
We  do  not  expect,  perhaps,  that  a  hod-carrier 
shall  move  gracefully,  or  speak  fluently,  or  talk 
without  profanity.  But  just  so  soon  as  life  calls 
for  leaders,  just  so  soon  as  a  crisis  comes,  so 
soon  as  education,  or  men  of  education,  are  in 
question,  —  we  ask  that  body,  mind,  and  soul,  all 
shall  be  quite  ready  for  our  service. 

Does  any  one  venture  to  make  what  men  call 
the  crucial .  test  the  test  of  success  in  war  ?  If 
you  inquire  there,  our  own  experience  is  all  on 
one  side.  The  education  of  West  Point,  which 
has  given  such  vigor  to  our  armies,  is  thoroughly 
liberal,  and  by  no  means  technical  or  special. 
What  men  write  English  like  your  West.  Point 
army  officers?  What  men  better  understand 
the  relations  of  science  with  science?  Nay, 
what  men  have  been  more  successful  in  their 
practical  interpretation  of  constitutional  law? 
And  if  you  will  ask  the  most  successful  of  them 
as  to  what  is  the  best  preparation  for  West 


WHAT    CAREER?  47 

Point,  they  will  tell  you,  without  exception, 
that  the  best  introduction  to  West  Point  is 
the  full  training  of  one  of  our  colleges.  And  if 
you  look  outside  West  Point,  in  the  army,  the 
verdict  is  the  same.  What  men  rose  to  rank 
most  distinguished,  and  won  the  love  as  well  as 
the  honors  of  the  country,  as  did  the  men  whom 
the  colleges  had  trained,  not  for  one  service 
only,  but  to  be  ready  for  whatever  call  of  duty  ? 
Let  me  indulge  a  personal  regard,  and  speak 
with  a  regret  which  is  not  personal  but  national, 
in  naming  for  my  own  Alma  Mater  our  Lowell 
and  Wadsworth.  Or  let  me  speak  for  the  coun- 
try when  I  name  men  still  living,  —  Hayes  and 
Terry,  and  Butler  and  Chamberlain,  and  Hawley 
and  Howard.  Did  not  such  men  lead  their  sol- 
diers under  fire  more  cheerfully,  because  every 
memory  of  old  heroism  and  storied  victory  was 
theirs,  —  the  memories  of  Mantin'ea  and  Ther- 
mopylae and  Lutzen  and  Naseby  ?  Did  they 
not  care  for  their  soldiers  more  tenderly  because 
their  eyes  had  overflowed  when  they  read  of  the 
gentle  ministries  of  St.  Louis  and  St.  Vincent  ? 
Did  not  they  rule  conquered  cities  more  firmly 


48  WHAT    CAREER? 

and  more  wisely  because  they  had  early  learned 
how  to  love  a  Curtius  and  to  scorn  a  Verres  ? 
Nay,  such  men  died  more  easily,  the  eye  of  the 
body  closed  with  one  smile  more  tender  creeping 
over  the  cold  features,  because,  as  they  died, 
they  remembered  what  Harvard  and  Yale  and 
Brunswick  and  Lewiston  and  Dartmouth  had 
taught  them  in  their  boyhood :  "  Blessing  and 
honor  indeed,  that  a  man  may  die  for  his  coun- 
try!" 

But  I  do  not  choose  to  discuss  these  ques- 
tions on  the  strength  of  any  illustrations,  how- 
ever pertinent  or  strong.  I  am  addressing 
young  men  whose  lives  are  consecrated-  to 
liberal  study,  in  colleges  founded  for  liberal 
study,  or  preparing  for  them.  No  college  can 
pretend  to  liberal  study  unless  it  is  baptized 
in  the  free  thought  of  its  founders.  Addressing 
them,  I  need  only  refer  to  the  central  demand 
of  all  Christian  education,  —  the  demand  made 
by  him  who  was  a  scholar  before  he  was  an 
apostle ;  who,  in  the  schools  of  Jewish  thought, 
and  even  from  the  teachers  of  Gentile  wisdom, 
had  learned  what  the  wisdom  of  men  had  to  say 


WHAT    CAREER?  49 

in  these  things.  It  is  St.  Paul  who  rises  above 
the  wisdom  of  the  flesh  to  speak  to  you  in  the 
words  of  the  Spirit.  It  is  Saint  Paul  who  sa}rs, 
in  words  which  might  be  well  taken  for  the 
eternal  motto  of  a  new-born  college,  that  the 
aim  of  all  life,  the  object  of  all  training,  is  that 
we  may  come  unto  a  perfect  man:  ei<?  avBpa 
Te\etov,  —  "  Unto  a  perfect  man  !  " 

It  is  not  simply  the  training  of  the  voice  to 
speak  ;  it  is  not  simply  the  training  of  the  eye 
to  see  ;  far  less  is  it  the  training  of  the  fin- 
gers of  the  hand  to  this  service  or  that  toil. 
It  is  that  we  may  come  unto  a  perfect  man. 
The  whole  body,  soul  and  spirit,  are  to  be 
presented  blameless,  —  the  body,  by  those  ex- 
ercises and  by  that  temperance  which  come 
from  the  wisdom  that  is  first  pure ;  the  mind, 
by  that  discipline  which  shall  quicken  fancy, 
shall  strengthen  memory,  and  shall  clear  argu- 
ment from  sophistry.  And  the  soul,  the  infinite 
child  of  an  infinite  God,  is  to  be  trained  in 
faith  and  hope  and  love  :  in  faith  to  look  above 
the  world ;  in  hope  to  look  beyond  time ;  in 
love  to  look  outside  its  lesser  life,  in  that  com- 
3 


50  WHAT    CAREER? 

munion  in  which  we  are  one  with  all  God's 
children,  one  even  with  himself.  This  is  the 
standard,  which  the  great  Christian  apostle 
proposes  for  your  education.  Try  his  experi- 
ment, and  look  forward  to  nothing  less  than 
this  ultimate  blessing.  Then  let  life  offer  what 
it  may ;  let  the  special  duty  be  here  or  there ; 
let  the  hand  be  called  for,  or  the  head,  or  the 
heart ;  let  it  be  words  of  conviction,  or  deeds  of 
valor,  or  prayers  of  faith,  which  the  world 
needs,  —  we  are  equipped  for  the  one  call  or  the 
other.  We  stand  not  hampered  lay  the  little 
habits  of  some  petty  training ;  we  stand  forth 
ready,  —  ay,  ready,  the  willing  sons  of  Almighty 
God,  strong  in  the  liberty  in  which  Christ  has 
made  us  free. 


WHAT    CAREER?  51 


III. 

NOBLESSE   OBLIGE. 

AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  ANNUAL  CONVENTION 
OF  ALPHA  DELTA  PHI,  MAY  18,  1871. 

"l^TEARLY  twenty  of  the  chief  colleges  of 
America  assemble  here  to-day.  The 
vision  of  a  far-sighted  man,  who  thought  it 
possible  to  unite  the  educated  men  of  America 
in  a  certain  unseen  tie  of  friendship,  is  so  far 
accomplished.  The  fittest  solemnities  of  such 
an  occasion  would  be,  perhaps,  a  generous 
rivalry  of  letters  between  the  institutions  rep- 
resented. As  Yale  and  Harvard,  Amherst  and 
Brown,  meet  at  Lake  Quinsigamond  to*  test 
muscle  and  endurance  on  the  water,  what  if 
A.  A.  $.  should  institute  such  games  as  those 
in  which  Herodotus  and  Pindar  won  victories 
in  the  days  of  laurels  ?  —  if  here,  not  one  orator 
spoke  alone,  nor  one  poet  sang,  but  if  from 
every  Alma  Mater  there  were  a  lyric ;  or  if  he 


52  WHAT    CAREER? 

who  had  composed  a  history  first  published  it 
to  the  world  by  reading  here  a  chapter,  and  if 
we  awarded  to  the  fittest  the  first  wreath  of  the 
crowns  of  thirty  centuries?  Well,  if  from  one 
Sybaris  or  another,  it  prove  that  one  Herodotus 
or  another  among  you,  gentlemen,  have  this 
chapter  of  history  in  his  pocket,  or  if  one  Pin- 
dar or  another  is  ready  to  sing  his  lay,  my 
friend  the  poet,  and  I,  the  more  prosaic  spokes- 
man, will  not  delay  them  long.  It  is  ours  to 
introduce  the  feast  of  learning,  which,  if  we 
adopt  that  custom  of  the  Alpha  Deltas  of  the 
Isthmus,  will  continue,  I  think,  for  many  days. 
I  will  be  satisfied,  in  such  preface,  to  speak  only 
as  one  of  so  many  representatives  of  the  seats 
of  learning.  I  will  not  pretend  that  we  are  all 
scholars.  At  the  bottom  of  our  hearts  we  know 
that  none  of  us  deserve  that  name.  But  I  will 
speak  to  men  of  the  liberal  professions,  as  one 
who  has  had  a  liberal  education.  To  education 
in  the  liberal  arts,  in  the  humanities,  our  col- 
leges are  pledged  and  our  fraternity  is  conse- 
crated. By  education  to  the  humanities,  and 
in  the  liberal  arts,  our  lives  have  been  blessed, 


WHAT    CAREER?  53 

we  are  the  men  we  are,  and  we  enjoy  what  we 
enjoy.  In  daily  life  we  may  be  hewers  of  wood 
and  drawers  of  water ;  but  we  hew  and  we 
draw  with  a  certain  divine  energy,  and  can 
make  the  humblest  duty  shine.  Nay :  this  also 
is  true,  that  from  the  moment  when  we  elected 
liberal  study  for  our  study,  the  liberal  arts  for 
our  arts,  the  liberal  professions  for  our  callings, 
—  the  whole  community  combined  to  help  us 
on.  For  us  it  has  endowed  its  Yale  and  its 
Cornell.  For  us  it  has  founded  the  Astor 
Library  and  the  Franklin  Academy.  For  us 
it  established  in  every  new  State  marked  out 
upon  the  map  in  the  wilderness  such  a  foun- 
dation for  a  university  as  no  emperor  of 
them  all  ever  gives  to  letters.  We  then,  as 
men  of  the  liberal  professions  or  as  those  who 
look  forward  to  them,  consider,  almost  of 
course,  when  we  meet  together,  what  are  the 
essential  attributes  of  these  professions,  and 
what  we  owe,  in  every-day  life,  to  Church  and 
State,  which  have  vied  with  each  other  in  es- 
tablishing them  and  maintaining  them. 

Noblesse  Oblige  !  —  Our  privilege  compels  us ! 


54  WHAT    CAREER? 

This  was  the  battle-cry  with  which  the  Duke 
de  Levis,  one  of  the  old  regime  of  France,  tried 
to  quicken  the  new  noblesse,  created  by  Napo- 
leon, and  to  point  them  their  duty  in  the  State. 
The  French  dictionaries  of  to-day  will  tell  you 
that  it  is  an  "  old  proverb."  The  idea  is  as 
old  and  as  new  as  the  word  of  Him  who  said, 
he  "  who  is  greatest  among  you  shall  be  your 
servant."  But  this  was  not  an  idea  believed 
in  by  the  old  noblesse  of  France.  And  its 
revival  in  new  expression,  when  Napoleon  tried 
to  renew  that  nobility,  marks  well  enough  the 
period  in  modern  history,  when  the  world  was 
becoming  so  far  Christian  that  men  of  great 
opportunities  were  all  taught  that  they  had 
great  responsibilities.  The  Count  Laborde  is 
my  authority  for  saying  that  this  noble  Chris- 
tian axiom  is  in  form  thus  modern. 

The  old  noblesse  of  France  never  made  public 
expression  of  the  idea.  But  the  motto  illus- 
trates fairly  enough  the  responsibility  which, 
in  all  countries  and  in  all  times,  is  on  the  lead- 
ers of  the  people.  In  our  country,  in  our  time, 
it  is  the  responsibility  which  rests  on  the  men 


WHAT    CAREER?  55 

of  liberal  culture  and  of  the  liberal  professions. 
Public  spirit,  which  is  the  life-breath  of  the 
Commonwealth ;  publicus  spiritus,  the  breath 
which,  if  it  cannot  draw,  it  is  stifled  and  dies ; 
public  spirit,  which  colors  red  the  lazy  life- 
blood  of  the  State,  gives  it  its  oxygen,  gives 
it  quickness,  gives  it  victory,  —  public  spirit 
will  so  quicken  it,  if  we  do  our  duty,  speak  our 
word,  put  our  shoulders  to  the  wheel.  If  we 
fail,  that  public  spirit  pants  heavily  and  slowly. 
For  the  men  of  liberal  culture,  of  the  liberal 
arts  and  professions,  —  for  the  men  who  have 
had  such  advantage  as  the  training  of  the 
higher  humanities  attempts  to  give,  —  I  say  all 
these  advantages  demand  of  us  special  sacrifices 
in  the  public  service  ;  that  we  quicken  as  we 
can  the  public  life  ;  that  we  live  as  we  may  in 
a  public  spirit.  Noblesse  Oblige !  Each  gift 
that  the  past  has  given  to  us  is  pledge  for  our 
discharge  of  the  common  duty. 

I.  If  I  had  no  other  reason  for  saying  this,  I 
should  be  tempted  to  make  it  the  subject  of  my 
address  to-day,  because  of  the  habit  bred  among 


56  WHAT    CAREER  V 

persons  who  do  not  know  what  liberal  culture 
is,  of  reducing  all  art,  study,  philosophy,  and 
religion  to  what  the  Germans  call  bread-and- 
butter  vocations.  When  the  Saviour  of  man- 
kind entered  upon  his  work  among  men,  the 
arch-tempter  of  mankind  tried  the  first  of  dev- 
ilish wiles  upon  him,  by  trying  to  persuade  him 
to  debase  the  life  divine  by  some  selfish  miracle 
which  should  make  bread  for  his  own  personal 
hunger.  The  same  tempter  offers  the  same 
temptation  to  each  child  of  God  this  day.  And 
in  the  several  voices  by  which  the  Father  of  lies 
addresses  men,  he  tries  to  make  them  believe 
that  according  as  they  succeed  in  coining  the 
divine  gift,  or  in  exchanging  it  for  bread,  or 
palace,  or  fine  clothing,  or  other  personal  lux- 
ury, in  that  proportion  have  their  lives  suc- 
ceeded. Thus  they  will  tell  you  that  Demas 
has  made  a  good  thing  of  it  because  he  sold  his 
article  in  the  "  Review "  for  two  hundred  arid 
fifty  dollars.  Thing,  indeed !  They  will  tell 
you  that  such  or  such  a  clergyman  preached  so 
many  sermons  in  a  year,  and  that  the  treasurer 
of  his  church  paid  him  such  or  such  a  salary  ; 


WHAT    CAREER?  57 

that,  therefore,  each  sermon  was  worth  so  many 
dollars,  so  many  cents,  so  many  mills,  and  so 
many  infinitesimal  fractions.  They  will  tell 
you  that  the  charming  little  bas-relief  by  Green- 
ough,  in  whose  simple  composition  lingers  a 
prayer  —  only  not  spoken  in  words  —  which  for 
century  upon  century  will  lift  spirits  eternal 
nearer  heaven,  sold  for  only  five  hundred 
dollars ;  while  the  piled-up  bronze  of  some 
Alexander  the  copper-smith,  which  insults  high 
heaven  in  its  angles,  shocks  low  earth  even  in 
its  tawdriness,  and  is  destined  to  be  cast  into 
bell-metal  as  soon  as  the  Right  shall  triumph  in 
any  happy  revolution,  —  they  will  tell  you  that 
this  piled-up  hideousness  cost  half  a  million 
dollars,  and  is  therefore  a  work  of  art  of  a 
thousand  times  the  value  of  the  other.  By 
such  absurd  and  forced  analogies,  all  borrowed 
from  the  world  of  hogsheads  and  tierces  and 
tons  and  quintals,  do  men  degrade  the  aspira- 
tions and  the  victories  of  the  only  life  that  is 
life !  Now,  because  this  vulgar  talk  creeps  into 
the  journals  and  into  general  society,  it  seems 
fit  to  present  the  true  purpose  and  motive  of 

3* 


58  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  liberal  professions  and  the  liberal  arts,  in 
a  meeting  of  men  who  are  pledged  to  them. 
We  are  not  hirelings  in  our  service.  Noblesse 
Oblige!  The  very  privileges  which  are  con- 
ferred upon  us  compel  us  to  do  our  duty.  The 
endowments  of  the  colleges,  —  every  luxury  of 
letters,  —  this  freemasonry  which  makes  us 
friends  here,  though  we  never  saw  each  other's 
faces;  every  privilege  of  our  lives  as  men  of 
liberal  training,  — involves  duties  to  the  State 
and  to  mankind. 

II.  What,  then,  are  the  distinctions  between 
a  guild  of  craftsmen  and  a  guild  of  men  of 
liberal  training  ?  What  account  is  to  be  given 
of  the  distinctions  which  we  enjoy,  as  men  of 
liberal  culture,  and  which  we  know  that  we 
enjoy?  The  mock-modesty  which  pretends 
there  are  no  such  distinctions  is  but  folly. 

I  do  not  speak  first  of  the  principle  involved. 
Before  we  examine  that,  we  shall  notice  two 
external  and  visible  distinctions. 

First,  The  liberal  professions  admit  no  secrets 
in  their  methods. 


WHAT    CAREER?  59 

Second,  In  these  professions,  the  compensa- 
tion rendered  is  not  computed  with  any  relation 
to  the  service  performed. 

The  historical  distinction  first  to  be  noticed 
is  that  the  professor,  or  the  master  of  liberal 
arts,  by  whatever  name  he  may  be  called, 
mediaeval  or  of  our  own  time,  has  no  secrets 
in  his  calling.  I  suppose,  if  we  cared  to  trace 
the  history  of  language,  we  should  find  in  this 
distinction  alone  the  origin  of  the  word  "lib- 
eral" as  applied  to  the  freedom  of  art,  —  of 
science,  —  or,  in  general,  of  vocation. 

Thus  the  great  distinction  of  the  artists  to 
whom  we  owe  the  new  birth  of  fine  art  in  the 
middle  ages  is  in  the  loyalty  with  which  they 
taught  all  they  knew.  To  surround  himself 
with  a  staff  of  young  and  brilliant  pupils,  to 
work  with  them,  to  show  them  every  process, 
to  talk  with  them  of  every  inspiration,  nay,  to 
intrust  to  their  hands  the  execution  of  detail 
upon  the  canvas,  —  this  was  the  method  of  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  great  Italian  artists.  It  was 
thus  that  Raphael  studied  with  Perugino ;  that 
Perugino,  Leonardo,  and  Michel  Angelo,  at 


60  WHAT    CAREER? 

one  time  or  at  another,  studied  together ;  that 
Michel  Angelo  learned  from  Ghirlandaio. 
Vasari  says  of  Raphael  that  he  never  refused 
to  any  artist,  though  he  were  wholly  unknown 
to  him,  his  personal  assistance  in  design  or  in 
execution  of  any  work ;  and  in  his  studio  he 
was  sometimes  surrounded  by  fifty  students, 
some  of  them  the  most  distinguished  men  of 
his  time,  to  whom  he  was  glad  indeed  to  teach 
all  he  knew. 

In  every  generation  of  such  communion  and 
inspiration,  by  the  divine  law  of  selection  itself, 
Art  gains  something.  "  Nature  gives  us  more 
than  all  she  ever  takes  away."  The  mere  sug- 
gestion of  the  man  of  genius  is  worked  out  by 
the  care  and  sympathy  of  the  man  of  talent ;  or 
the  ingenious  plan  and  structure  of  the  man  of 
talent  is  taken  in  hand  and  made  effective  by 
the  perseverance  and  adaptations  of  the  man 
of  practice.  Nay,  let  us  not  forget,  in  such 
a  review,  the  place  filled  by  the  mere  drudge, 
who  thought  he  could  only  grind  the  color,  or 
rub  down  the  surface,  or  hew  the  wood,  or  draw 
the  water  for  the  more  favored  children  of  Art 


WHAT    CAREER?  61 

in  their  divine  imagining ;  for,  as  he  faithfully 
does  the  duty  that  comes  next  his  hand,  how 
often  has  it  proved  that  he  also  contributed 
what  was  essential  to  the  whole :  nay,  how 
often  has  it  been  seen  that  here  was  the  com- 
pleter  life,  because  of  the  slower  development, 
and  that  when  its  hour  of  bud  and  blossom 
and  perfume  came,  there  unfolded  from  our 
unsightly  cactus  a  wealth  of  crystalline  color, 
spicy  fragrance,  and  delicate  grace  which  ex- 
ceeded all  the  glories  of  precocious  gardening ! 
Such  are  the  triumphs  of  Art,  where  the  artist 
proves  himself  the  true  artist  by  taking  all  who 
come  into  his  confidence,  by  keeping  nothing 
secret  which  God  has  taught  to  him,  but  teach- 
ing freely  to  all  who  will  hear  all  he  knows  he 
knows. 

Perhaps  it  is  easier  for  a  clergyman  to  make 
this  statement  in  its  principle,  because  every  one 
grants  at  once  that  in  those  cases,  rare  if  you 
please,  where  our  services  are  of  any  value,  they 
are  invaluable  and  beyond  all  price.  A  sermon 
of  Robertson's,  if  it  be  of  any  use  at  all,  is  of 
transcendent  and  infinite  value.  The  advice 


62  WHAT    CAREER? 

which  the  country  parson  gave  your  brother 
when  he  went  away  to  sea,  if  it  had  any  worth 
at  all,  had  worth  not  to  be  measured  by  any 
human  coinage.  What,  indeed,  shall  a  man 
give  in  exchange  for  his  soul,  if  he  have  a  soul  ? 
St.  Paul,  therefore,  the  first  of  preachers,  putb 
this  matter  on  a  perfect  basis  in  the  very  begin- 
ning, when  he  says  that  the  man  who  gives  his 
life  to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel,  or  to  other 
ministry,  is  entitled  somewhere  and  somehow  to 
a  physical  livelihood  at  the  hands  of  the  world 
he  serves.  As  to  where  or  how  the  somewhere 
or  somehow  comes,  St.  Paul  is  indifferent:  let 
the  world  settle  that  for  itself.  So  he  sends  the 
Epistle  to  the  Philippians  without  entering  it 
for  copyright  at  the  clerk's  office  in  the  library 
of  the  Senate ;  and  he  sends  out  the  devil  from 
the  possessed  girl,  in  the  streets  of  Philippi, 
without  asking  her,  as  Dr.  This  or  That  whom 
you  or  I  could  name  would  do,  how  much  money 
she  is  willing  to  pay  in  advance  on  the  chances 
of  a  cure.  Not  because  Paul  said  it,  but  be- 
cause it  is  essential  common  sense,  this  is  the 
necessary  law  of  compensation  for  those  callings 


WHAT    CAREER?  63 

•which  deal  with  life,  —  life  being  in  itself  in- 
finite and  priceless.  Nobody  pays  us  for  this 
special  duty  or  that  duty.  The  world  is  bound 
in  general  to  see  that  we  live.  And  there  is  no 
asceticism  about  this,  nor  what  people  call  com- 
munism. The  world  must  see  that  its  servants 
so  live  as  to  render  the  most  efficient  service. 

True,  the  world's  servant  must  prove  to  the 
world  that  he  can  serve  it.  The  world  must 
compensate  him  at  its  estimate,  and  not  at  his 
own.  But,  beyond  this,  the  particular  method 
in  which  society  or  the  world  arranges  for  his 
compensation  is  matter,  not  of  principle,  but  of 
detail.  It  will  be  settled  by  custom,  or  settled 
by  history,  or  settled  as  a  natural  outgrowth  of 
the  organization  of  the  country.  The  life-salary 
of  a  physician  may  be  adjusted  for  him  by  the 
table  of  fees  which  the  county  medical  society 
agree  upon.  I  think  very  likely  that  may  be 
the  most  convenient  way.  But  he  might  be 
paid  as  a  ship's  surgeon  is  paid,  by  an  annual 
salary;  or  he  might  be  paid  as  they  say  the 
Chinese  physicians  are  paid,  a  fixed  income  pro- 
**  portioned  on  the  families  in  health  in  his  dis- 


64  WHAT    CAREER? 

trict,  subject  to  a  regular  deduction,  to  be  paid 
by  the  doctors  in  pensions  to  those  families 
where  there  is  disease.  Just  so  in  a  clergyman's 
duty :  his  living  may  be  secured  to  him  by  a  tax 
upon  the  land,  as  in  England  ;  by  a  salary  from 
the  government,  as  in  France  ;  by  alms  collected 
by  begging,  as  with  the  Dominicans  ;  by  a  stated 
annual  compensation  guaranteed  by  a  particular 
parish,  as  is  sometimes  the  practice  here  ;  or  by 
the  varying  contributions  of  the  worshippers,  as 
is  the  custom  sometimes.  The  method  is  mere 
leather  and  prunella :  the  essential  is,  that  the 
servant  of  the  community  in  a  liberal  profession, 
because  he  deals  with  infinite  values,  is  entitled 
to  his  living  at  the  hands  of  the  world  he  serves. 
What  follows  is,  that  the  world's  servant  in  a 
liberal  profession  renders  his  service  without 
stint  or  stop,  to  the  full  and  utmost  of  his  ca- 
pacity. Ready  ?  ay,  ready  !  Body,  mind,  and 
soul  held  ready  for  the  noblest  duty.  Never 
overstrained,  never  sluggish,  never  fevered, 
never  torpid,  never  despondent,  never  extrav- 
agant, —  all  this  because  never  bought  and 
never  sold! 


WHAT    CAREER?  65 

The  clergy  and  the  doctors  deal  directly  with 
life  in  distinct  issues  ;  so  that  these  illustrations 
seem  most  simple,  perhaps,  in  the  cases  which  I 
have  cited.  Life,  being  an  infinite  principle,  is 
of  infinite  value.  It  is  invaluable.  But  the 
principle  is  the  same  in  all  the  liberal  callings, 
for  the  reason  that  they  all  deal  with  infinite 
values,  not  to  be  weighed,  counted,  or  measured. 
Such  are  the  dealings  of  an  artist:  beauty  in 
the  finished  marble,  or  on  the  glowing  canvas,  is 
of  infinite  value  or  it  is  of  none.  When  we 
read  "  Viri  Romae  "  at  school,  we  were  taught  to 
laugh  at  the  barbarous  consul  who,  when  the 
statues  of  Corinth  were  packed  for  his  Roman 
triumph,  told  the  expressmen  of  that  day  that  if 
they  were  broken  they  must  make  him  new 
ones.  But  the  same  absurdity  shows  itself  at 
Washington,  whenever  Congress  limits  an  ap- 
propriation for  a  work  of  art,  by  saying  it  shall 
be  made  from  American  marble,  or  by  an  Ameri- 
can artist,  or  perhaps  by  an  artist  who  has  never 
learned  how,  in  order  to  give  him  an  opportu- 
nity. I  want  my  statue  first-rate,  or  I  do  not 
want  any!  Give  me  a  fresh  egg,  or  give  me 
none  at  all! 


66  WHAT    CAREER? 

So  in  education.  Let  tutor  or  professor  give 
himself  completely  to  his  work,  —  body,  soul, 
and  spirit,  —  and  I  do  not  care  whether  he 
teaches  my  boy  botany  or  electricity.  The  liv- 
ing soul  will  quicken  other  life.  But  let  him 
give  only  the  fag-end,  the  drainings,  what  there 
is  left  in  the  yellow  sheets  of  the  lectures  of 
some  other  generation,  again ;  he  may  lecture 
of  Sanskrit  or  of  Pleiocene  to  the  boy,  it  is  all 
one,  —  the  one  lecture  is  as  useless  as  the  other. 
Let  him  give  his  best,  or  let  him  give  nothing. 

I  need  no  better  illustration  than  the  contrast 
between  the  free  sports  of  your  own  ball-grounds 
and  the  prostituted  exercise,  purchased  and 
paid  for,  of  what  is  miscalled  "  professional  ball- 
playing."  The  true  aspirant  in  the  liberal  call- 
ings enters  on  his  career  as  freshly  and  as  bravely 
as  you,  young  gentlemen,  strike  the  ball,  catch 
it,  make  a  base,  or  wait  your  turn  ;  but  the  other 
has,  of  his  own  free  will,  degraded  himself  to 
the  level  of  the  so-called  "professional  club- 
man," who  must  throw  so  far  or  must  strike  so 
true  or  run  so  fast,  or  he  has  not  earned  his 
share  in  the  day's  receipts,  and  may  lose  his 
engagements  for  the  next  quarter! 


WHAT    CAREER?  67 

I  hope  the  American  lawyer  understands  the 
same  truth,  that,  unless  he  deals  with  infinite 
values,  his  profession  is  a  handicraft  and  his 
duty  a  job.  Unless  he  deals  with  justice,  pure 
as  heaven,  — •  unless  he  deals  with  truth,  virgin 
as  truth  was  born, — there  is  for  him  no  ermine. 
These  States,  in  our  organization  of  society, 
have  given  distinguished  position  to  the  men  of 
his  calling ;  have  shielded  them  by  privilege  else 
wholly  unknown.  They  are  exempt  from  many 
of  the  burdens  of  other  life,  and  see  open  to 
them  its  highest  honors.  This  is  because  they 
are  pledged  in  their  very  training,  and  by  their 
oaths  of  office  are  sworn,  to  obtain  justice  for  all 
men  and  for  the  State.  The  American  lawyer 
ought  not  to  forget  the  traditions  of  his  pro- 
fession. The  Templars  of  England,  through 
whose  hands  come  down  to  him  the  methods  of 
the  past,  are  the  direct  descendants  of  templars 
bound  to  the  service  of  chivalry.  The  only  fee 
which  he  receives  is  in  form  an  " honorarium" 
—  not  the  pay  for  service.  The  service  is  the 
unbought  service  of  the  King  of  truth  and  of 
right.  He  goes  forth  on  his  circuit,  such  is  the 


68  WHAT    CAREER  V 

theory  of  his  profession,  with  the  same  deter- 
mination to  protect  the  right  and  to  crush  the 
wrong  which  sent  out  Launcelot  or  Arthur. 
Who  needs  his  help?  Is  it  this  poor  boy,  ar- 
raigned for  murder  by  a  mad  mob,  because  he 
is  of  another  color  than  theirs,  and  they  will 
wreak  on  him  the  wrath  of  centuries  ?  Or  is  it 
some  child  of  luxury,  born  in  the  purple,  who 
has  smiles  and  honors  and  gold  for  her  minions  ? 
He  does  his  best,  be  it  for  the  one  or  for  the 
other :  ferrets  out  conspiracy ;  seizes  truth, 
though  truth  be  hiding  her  face  in  tears  ;  and 
compels  the  tribunal  to  decide  rightly!  The 
moment  that  the  American  lawyer  abandons 
this  position ;  the  moment  that  he  sells  justice, 
or  the  share  of  justice  that  his  services  can  com- 
mand, to  the  highest  bidder ;  the  moment  he 
says  that  the  ring  which  can  spend  millions  shall 
have  millions'  worth,  while  the  beggar  with 
a  penny  shall  have  a  penny's  worth,  —  in  such 
words  of  blasphemy  he  shows  he  has  no  knowl- 
edge of  what  justice  is.  He  abandons  the  posi- 
tion of  one  who  deals  with  infinite  realities. 
He  has  left,  as  one  unfit,  the  ranks  of  a  liberal 


WHAT    CAREER?  69 

calling.  He  makes  himself  a  mere  craftsman, 
dealing  with  things  alone,  and  to  be  recompensed 
with  things  alone.  Leave  him,  gentlemen  ;  leave 
him  to  the  company  he  deserves ! 

III.  The  visible  distinctions,  then,  between 
the  liberal  professions  and  the  crafts,  or  trades, 
are  these  two :  — 

First,  That  the  liberal  professions  have,  and 
can  have,  no  secrets  in  their  methods. 

Second,  That  men  engaged  in  them  are  not 
paid,  and  cannot  be  paid,  piecemeal  fok  their 
endeavors. 

Woe  to  the  doctor  who  does  not  his  best  for 
the  poorest  beggar  as  for  the  richest  prince  ! 

Woe  to  the  clergyman  who  has  fewer  minis- 
tries of  comfort  for  Lazarus  than  for  Dives  ! 

Woe  to  the  lawyer  who  is  other  than  the 
defender  of  ignorance  against  cunning ! 

Woe  to  the  artist  who  carves  less  than  his 
best  in  the  marble,  or  paints  other  than  his 
truest  on  the  canvas ! 

Woe  to  the  teacher  who  teaches  by  rote  and 
catechism,  and  does  not  make  the  classic  burn 


70  WHAT    CAREER? 

again  with  Virgil's  fire,  or  the  hard  equation 
speak  with  the  eloquence  of  truth  divine  ! 

And  these  two  distinctions  are  enough  to 
show  that  the  essential  principle  which  lifts  the 
liberal  professions  to  their  place  above  all  other 
callings,  is  that  they  deal  directly  with  infinite 
values.  They  deal  with  infinite  life,  or  life 
in  one  of  its  infinite  relations.  The  callings  of 
the  teacher,  the  artist,  the  lawyer,  the  doctor, 
the  clergyman,  all  assert  their  dignity  because 
of  this  infinite  element  appearing  directly  in 
their  endeavors.  Can  any  other  calling  make 
the  same  claim  ?  That  moment  there  is  another 
liberal  profession,  so  long  as  that  claim  is  true. 

This,  gentlemen  of  the  Alpha  Delta  Phi,  is 
the  life  for  which  your  training  in  these  uni- 
versities is  fitting  you.  In  one  ministry  or  an- 
other to  which  you  are  to  devote  yourselves, 
you  are  to  be  engaged  in  these  highest  of  rela- 
tions. Justice,  Beauty,  Truth,  Life :  it  is  to 
these  that  you  consecrate  your  being,  —  to  a 
chivalry,  to  a  nobility,  no  less  than  is  involved 
in  such  consecration. 

That  privilege,  I  said,  brings  with  it  its  du- 


WHAT    CAREER?  71 

ties.  Noblesse  Oblige!  When  the  Government 
trains  your  young  friends  at  West  Point,  they 
know  they  are  bound  in  honor  for  its  flag  to 
live  and  for  its  flag  to  die.  Nor  have  many  of 
them  proved  false  to  that  requisition.  When 
these  colleges,  which  you  represent,  were  estab- 
lished by  pious  men,  or  by  far-seeing  Govern- 
ments, or  by  an  aggressive  Church. — when  they 
gave  to  you  the  training  and  the  companionship 
which  make  you  what  you  are  and  will  be, — 
you  were  bound  in  just  the  same  responsibility. 
Noblesse  Oblige!  You  could  not,  if  you  would, 
escape  the  obligation.  And  the  Republic  lives 
or  dies  according  as  we,  and  others  like  us,  give 
to  her  or  refuse  to  her  this  unpurchased  service. 
There  are  enough  who  will  go  into  her  councils 
"bribed  by  her  gold.  There  are  enough  who  will 
affiliate  themselves  in  intrigues  to  sway  her 
policy,  in  the  hope  of  petty  places  for  them- 
selves or  their  friends. 

Unless  there  are  more  who  are  driven  into 
the  service,  which  public  spirit  demands  by  the 
nobility  of  men,  who  would  bear  their  brothers' 
burdens,  the  Republic  dies.*  Enter  upon  life, 


72  WHAT    CAREER? 

and  you  will  find  with  every  day  some  new  call 
made  for  your  unselfish  service.  You  are  to  im- 
prove the  schools,  or  you  are  to  mend  the  roads, 
or  you  are  to  give  strength  to  the  church. 
Here  must  be  a  free  library,  and  no  one  but  you 
to  see  to  it ;  there  must  be  a  hospital,  and  but 
for  you  the  sick  will  die  unattended,  and  the 
blind  in  darkness.  Do  not  let  us,  who  are  your 
seniors,  hear  any  such  excuse  from  you  as  that 
"  every  man  has  his  price  ;  "  that  "  every  hour 
must  be  coined ;  "  that  "  another  man  may  do  it 
as  well  as  you."  No  man  can  do  the  work  to 
which  God  calls  you,  but  you  yourself.  And 
we,  as  we  pass  off  the  stage,  expect  and  demand 
of  you,  who  come  after  us,  that  you  stand  by  the 
State  and  Church  which  have  stood  by  you. 
Let  us  hear  this  resolution  from  the  young  men 
who  follow  us.  Our  privilege  compels  us, — 
Noblesse  Oblige  ! 

Men  of  my  calling,  trained  to  the  one  univer- 
sal profession  in  the  study  of  theology,  —  who 
may  study  all  life,  because  our  study  is  to  draw 
men  nearer  to  the  God  of  life,  —  in  the  fascina- 
tion of  our  own  calling  never  fully  understand 


WHAT    CAREER?  73 

why  men  engage  themselves  willingly  in  other 
walks  of  duty.  To  us  all  studies  are  open,  and 
there  is  no  science  where  we  may  not  inquire. 
None  the  less  do  we  see,  however,  that  all  men, 
of  whatever  calling,  so  far  as  they  deal  with 
these  divine  and  infinite  relations  of  man, — 
truth,  beauty,  justice,  or  life,  —  are  all  Knights 
of  one  Round  Table,  linked  together  in  one 
great  fraternity  of  duty,  blessed  by  one  privi- 
lege, and  called  by  one  call.  That  call  is, 
to  quicken  and  enlarge  the  life  of  the  State,  — 
the  public  spirit,  in  which  the  State  endures. 
We  stand  by  each  other,  shoulder  to  shoulder, 
in  such  endeavors  ;  or  we  encourage  each  other 
by  distant  signals,  each  from  his  lonely  beacon. 
That  these  drudges  in  the  crowded  city  may 
truly  live;  that  these  heathen  in  the  polluted 
islands  may  truly  live  ;  that  this  miser,  heaping 
up  rusty  gold,  may  truly  live ;  that  these  de- 
bauched profligates,  wasted  in  lust,  may  truly 
live  ;  that  the  nation,  not  hampered  by  her  use- 
less acres,  nor  bound  to  earth  by  her  mines  of 
wealth,  may  truly  live, — this  is  our  office, 
an  office  which  is  our  privilege.  This  is  the 
4 


74  WHAT    CAREER? 

service  in  which  we  are  united  as  servants  of 
the  liberal  professions.  It  is  the  service  to 
which  we  are  called  by  Him  who  lived  and  died 
that  men  might  have  life  more  abundantly ! 


WHAT    CAREER?  75 


IV. 
THE    MIND'S    MAXIMUM. 

men  who  have  to  do  work  with  their 
brains,  even  in  the  humbler  processes  of 
such  labor,  grow  to  be  forty  years  old  without 
regretting  that  they  were  not  taught,  twenty 
years  before,  those  arrangements  and  devices 
for  husbanding  their  intellectual  faculty,  and 
making  it  as  useful  to  them  as  possible,  which 
they  have  been  obliged  to  learn  for  themselves, 
without  system,  and  often  in  the  wreck  of  fail- 
ure. There  is  nothing  so  much  neglected  in 
the  universities,  where  they  attempt  to  teach 
almost  every  thing,  as  the  sciences  of  learning 
rapidly  and  of  using  readily  what  one  knows. 
The  rules  and  constitutions  of  Benedictines 
and  of  Jesuits  show  how  much  and  how  little 
care  the  lawgivers  of  such  orders  of  students 
devoted  to  systematizing  study.  These  direc- 
tions are  almost  always  superficial  and  empirical, 


76  WHAT    CAREER? 

and,  though  by  no  means  without  value,  no- 
where rise  to  the  dignity  of  a  philosophical  sys- 
tem of  intellectual  activity.  In  our  own  time, 
there  has  been  a  great  deal  said  about  "self- 
culture,"  which  has  professed  to  give  instructions 
for  intellectual  culture.  But  a  treatise  on  self- 
culture  generally  ends,  as  Dr.  Channing's  does, 
in  showing  that  it  is  very  important  to  have  the 
mind  well  trained,  and  in  good  working  order, 
without  telling  how  it  is  to  be  trained  for  keep- 
ing its  working  power  at  a  maximum.  There 
is  also  latent  in  most  of  such  books  the  grave 
error  that  a  man  cultivates  his  mind  simply  by 
reading,  —  a  process  which,  in  fact,  often  in- 
volves a  loss  of  mental  efficiency.  This  error 
has  gone  so  far,  that  in  common  talk  a  man  is 
praised  for  cultivating  his  mind,  simply  in  pro- 
portion as  he  reads  books  of  any  graver  char- 
acter than  novels. 

Such  errors  are  not  made  in  either  of  the 
other  great  lines  of  human  activity.  In  the 
domain  of  bodily  work,  people  understand  that 
the  training  of  the  body  is  one  thing,  and  the 
feeding  it  quite  another.  When  that  periodical 


WHAT    CAREER?  77 

cycle  of  interest  in  physical  training  comes 
round,  through  which  just  now  we  happen  to  be 
passing,  nobody  sends  the  young  gymnast  into 
a  fruit-market,  or  to  a  table  d'hote,  directing 
him  to  eat  all  he  can,  by  way  of  educating  his 
body.  And  the  time  has  passed,  in  the  other 
science  of  training  the  soul,  when  men  thought 
it  would  attain  its  full  power  by  rapt  contem- 
plation of  God  and  heaven.  It  is  only  in  the 
cultivation  of  the  mind,  that  there  is  tolerated 
a  general  gorging :  each  teacher  encouraged  to 
force  down  as  much  as  he  can,  and  the  pupil 
then  turned  loose,  to  bring  his  resources  to  bear 
as  best  he  can,  without  a  suggestion,  even,  as  to 
methods  of  working  power. 

Yet  the  demand  of  the  present  time  is  es- 
pecially for  the  utmost  amount  of  intellectual 
work  which  can  be  extorted  from  educated  men, 
and  consequently  for  its  utmost  facility  and 
method.  There  are  not  enough  of  them  to 
do  the  world's  work  now ;  and  the  insufficient 
body  of  those  who  are  detailed  to  this  duty, 
ought  to  husband  their  mental  resources  to  the 
utmost,  and  to  bring  them  to  bear  with  the  most 


78  WHAT    CAREER? 

recondite  tactics.  Let  any  professional  man  of 
to-day  amuse  himself  for  an  hour  with  his 
grandfather's  diary  of  his  professional  life.  Let 
him  compare  the  letter  a  month  received  and 
answered  in  the  life  of  the  last  century,  against 
his  own  file  of  three  or  four  hundred  received, 
indexed,  and  replied  to  within  a  like  time.  Let 
him  compare  the  grandfather's  annual  ride,  by 
his  own  horse-and-chaise  power,  to  the  "  Con- 
vention of  Ministers,"  when  Election  Week 
came  round,  with  his  own  annual  attendance  at 
a  year's  directors'  meetings,  committee  meetings, 
board  meetings,  and  trustees'  meetings.  Let 
him  look  at  the  schedule  of  books  attached  to 
his  grandfather's  will,  called  his  "library,"  to 
see  that  there  are  not  so  many  in  all  as  he  has 
been  expected  to  give  an  opinion  on  in  the 
conversation  of  the  last  five  years  of  life.  Let 
him  count,  in  the  diary,  the  number  of  public 
opinions  which  his  grandfather  formed  in  ten 
years  of  voting  for  Washington,  Adams,  Bow- 
doin  and  Strong,  against  the  opinions  which  he 
has  himself  been  compelled  to  form,  and  form 
correctly,  regarding  foreign  and  home  politics, 


WHAT    CAREER?  79 

State  administration,  city,  church,  and  school 
affairs ;  regarding  water,  gas,  horse  railroads, 
school-ventilation,  foreign  emigration,  negro 
emancipation,  and  the  rest,  —  opinions  which 
he  has  had  to  enforce,  and  to  carry  if  he  could, 
at  three  or  four  special,  city,  State,  and  national 
elections  every  year.  Any  man  who  will  make 
this  contrast  will  see  that  this  generation  re- 
quires an  amount  of  intellectual  readiness,  and 
a  degree  of  economy  in  the  right  and  righteous 
use  of  intellectual  power,  such  as  no  generation 
has  required  before. 

We  have  no  hope  of  laying  down  the  true 
system  of  the  maximum  of  intellectual  effort. 
But  we  do  hope  to  show  that  teachers,  of  what- 
ever grade,  ought  to  give  more  attention  than 
they  have  done  to  suggesting  for  their  pupils 
systems  so  essential.  To  take  a  little  instance  : 
there  is  not  an  axiom  in  physics  more  absolutely 
settled  than  the  fact  that  no  mental  labor  of 
any  sort  should  be  attempted  within  the  hour 
after  a  full  meal.  Yet  it  is  only  within  a  few 
years  that  the  University  at  our  Cambridge 
ceased  to  bid  students  recite  within  forty  min- 


80  WHAT    CAREER? 

utes  after  the  beginning  of  breakfast,  and  with- 
in an  hour  after  the  beginning  of  dinner.  What 
was  as  bad  was,  that  half  the  college  recited — 
or,  shall  we  say,  pretended  to  recite — before 
breakfast  was  served.  The  old  monks,  from 
whom  the  greater  part  of  our  college  system 
has  descended,  at  least  knew  better  than  this. 
In  these  details,  matters  are  now  better  ordered 
at  Cambridge.  It  is  possible  that  the  gym- 
nasium and  the  trainer  may  introduce  yet 
more  improvements.  We  hear  rumors  some- 
times of  practical  hints,  given  by  professors 
there,  of  the  way  to  bring  mental  faculty  into 
play.  And  we  are  not  without  hopes  that,  as 
there  has  long  been  a  course  there  on  "  The 
Means  of  Preserving  Health,"  some  teacher 
may  introduce  a  course  on  "  The  Methods  of 
Using  Intellectual  Power."  Such  a  course 
comes  fairly  within  the  range  either  of  theology, 
ethics,  metaphysics,  or  hygiene ;  and  whoever 
first  does  throw  into  system  the  results  of  thirty 
years  of  his  own  experience,  and  teach  the  arts, 
methods,  and  science  of  best  husbanding  and 
cultivating,  and  of  most  quickly  and  vividly 


WHAT    CAREER?  81 

using,  intellectual  power,  whether  of  the 
meanest  or  finest  quality,  will  earn  the  grati- 
tude of  the  meanest  and  finest  minds  together, 
and  a  claim  to  a  share  in  whatever  good  they 
may  ever  work  for  mankind. 

I.  In  pointing  out  the  relations  of  such  in- 
struction to  the  different  lines  of  human  science, 
we  must,  with  whatever  regret,  speak  first  of  its 
physiological  relations.  We  beg  the  reader, 
however,  not,  for  this,  to  turn  ruthlessly  from 
this  paper,  as  if  he  had  here  only  another  divi- 
dend from  the  assets  of  Sylvester-Grahamism, 
or  House-I-Live-in-ism.  We  are  forced  to  speak 
of  physiology;  but  our  chief  object  is  to  say 
that  that  folly  is  now  nearly  exploded,  which 
mistook  the  severe  treatment  necessary  (per- 
haps) for  the  cure  of  students  in  confirmed 
dyspepsia,  for  the  proper  treatment  of  men  in 
health,  eager  to  work,  mentally,  under  the 
requisitions  of  this  time,  up  to  the  very  top  of 
their  steam.  The  dyspeptics  may  settle  with 
the  doctors  what  is  the  proper  treatment  for 
them.  We  neither  know  nor  care.  Our  busi- 
4» 


82  WHAT    CAREER? 

ness  is  with  men  in  health,  that  they  may  keep 
their  health,  and  that  they  may  find  out  what  is 
the  highest  amount  of  their  working  power,  and 
may  keep  to  that  without  overrunning  it.  We 
venture  to  say  that,  for  them,  any  system  of 
half-diet,  of  scales  to  weigh  daily  bread,  of  food 
marked  by  some  invalid  name,  —  any  system,  in 
short,  which  in  any  way  suggests  hospitals 
or  convalescence,  —  is  bad  practice.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  venture  to  say  to  the  dyspeptics, 
that  they  had  better  leave  the  company  of  men 
working  with  their  minds  till  they  are  well.  It 
will  not  be  long.  There  is  always  open,  for  in- 
stance, the  army ;  and  when  on  foot  in  the  open 
air,  we  forget  the  doctor  soon. 

The  dictum  with  regard  to  food,  then,  is 
probably  that  of  one  of  our  most  judicious 
medical  men,  to  whom  this  community  is  largely 
indebted,  who  used  to  say  to  his  class:  "In 
brief,  gentlemen,  you  may  eat  what  you  choose, 
when  you  choose,  and  as  often  as  you  choose ; 
only  be  careful  not  to  look  at  your  tongues  after 
you  have  done."  For  as,  in  the  highest  stage 
which  in  this  world  we  come  to  in  the  religious 


WHAT    CAREER?  83 

life,  a  man  forgets  he  has  a  soul  through  uinetj- 
nine  out  of  a  hundred  of  the  hours  which  he 
crowds  full  of  enterprise  for  the  glory  of  God, 
so,  in  the  lower  plane  of  which  we  speak  now, 
he  forgets,  by  a  corresponding  law,  that  he  has 
a  body.  The  degree  to  which  he  remembers  or 
forgets  it  gives  an  accurate  measurement  of  its 
frailty  or  its  health. 

For  all  this,  however,  he  has  a  body ;  and 
the  ignorance  of  youth,  which  risks  it  some- 
times to  its  ruin,  is  not  the  same  grace  as  the 
confirmed  habit  of  discipline  to  which  we  would 
lead  youth,  which  uses  it  as  not  abusing  it. 
They  are,  at  the  least,  as  different  as  is  inno- 
cence from  virtue.  Man  has  a  body.  It  is  one 
of  his  tools.  His  mind  is  the  other.  Now,  the 
Latin  Grammar  is  very  right  in  saying :  "  The 
mind  itself  knows  not  what  the  mind  is ;"  which 
is  as  true  of  Spurzheim's  mind  as  it  was  of  Cic- 
ero's. But  the  mind  does  know,  by  this  time, 
that,  whatever  it  is  or  is  not,  it  works  by  means 
of  a  physical  arrangement  called  a  brain,  or  a 
pair  of  brains.  Let  the  question  lie,  then,  what 
the  mind  is.  Still,  in  discussing  the  discipline 


84  WHAT    CAREER? 

of  its  working  power,  we  must  say  something, 
however  unwillingly,  on  the  physiological  con- 
ditions of  the  brain,  on  the  privileges  to  which 
it  is  entitled,  and  the  cautions  which  it  has  a 
right  to  claim  from  those  who  would  effect  the 
most  the  most  promptly,  with  an  organ  so 
exquisite  and  so  delicate. 

The  familiar  statement  that  the  "  brain  is  the 
stomach,"  or  the  "  stomach  is  the  brain,"  which 
we  sometimes  hear,  would  probably  not  satisfy 
the  anatomists.  But  it  expresses  very  con- 
veniently some  results  of  physiology  and  anat- 
omy which  all  workmen  ought  to  remember. 
The  chief  of  them  is  this,  that,  at  the  moment 
when  you  have  given  the  stomach  its  work  to 
do,  you  have  no  right  to  call  upon  the  brain,  at 
the  other  end  of  the  same  system,  to  be  working 
for  you  also.  When  you  are  journeying,  you 
take  assiduous  care  that  your  horse  shall  not  be 
compelled  to  do  any  work  in  the  hour  after  he 
has  slowly  eaten  his  grain.  The  horse  has  cost 
you  money ;  and,  even  in  the  poor  business  of 
his  muscular  action,  you  know  that  he  needs  all 
his  vital  resource  for  the  single  matter  of  getting 


WHAT    CAREER?  85 

his  grain  in  part  stowed  away.  Because  you 
happen  to  be  impatient,  you  do  not  risk  his 
health,  which  you  have  paid  for.  Now,  it  is 
true  that  you  never  bought  your  brain  at  a 
horse-market.  It  might  not  fetch  a  bid  there. 
Certainly  it  ought  not,  if  you  have  no  more 
practical  notion,  after  your  experience  of  it, 
than  to  set  it  hard  at  work  while  the  whole 
working  power  of  your  system  has  been  pre-  ' 
engaged  lower  down.  Consider  what  you  have 
done.  You  have  poured  together  a  pint  of 
coffee,  three  hot  biscuits  buttered,  the  lean 
parts  of  two  mutton-chops,  and  a  slice  of  stale 
bread,  into  the  reservoir  which  contains  your 
provisions  for  the  first  six  hours  of  the  day. 
You  have  done  this  by  way  of  breaking  the  fast 
of  the  night  before.  Give,  now,  to  the  officials 
who  have  the  present  charge  of  those  supplies 
an  hour's  uninterrupted  time  after  you  have 
done :  do  not  embarrass  them  by  constantly 
sending  down  to  ask  what  is  seven  times  nine, 
or  what  is  the  interest  for  four  years  and  eleven 
days  on  blank  hundred  and  blankty-blank  dol- 
lars at  blank  per  cent.  Give  them  that  hour 


86  WHAT    CAREER? 

of  undisturbed  work  on  their  present  business, 
and  then  start  the  engine  slowly ;  and  thank 
us,  who  have  advised  you,  for  the  promptness 
and  efficiency  of  its  new  revolution. 

Without  dabbling  in  the  detail  of  physiology, 
we  may  say,  simply,  that  one  precise  object  for 
which  you  have  eaten  your  breakfast  is  to  give 
to  this  delicate  organ,  the  brain,  the  compensa- 
tion it  needs  for  the  work  it  did  for  you  yester- 
day. You  may  call  it  wages,  if  you  regard  the 
brain  as  your  servant ;  or  food,  if  you  regard  it 
as  your  slave  ;  or  sympathy  and  encouragement, 
if  you  regard  it  as  your  friend.  Whatever  you 
call  the  breakfast,  the  fact  is,  that  the  brain  lost 
in  amount  of  substance  yesterday  just  in  pro- 
portion as  you  worked  hard  with  it.  The  nice 
observations  of  a  few  years  past  have  shown  to 
a  certainty  that  the  brain  loses  elements,  which 
may  be  detected  as  phosphates  in  the  fluids  of 
the  body,  just  in  proportion  to  the  intensity  of 
its  exercise.  The  masterly  argument  with  which 
you  kept  that  drows}^  jury  awake  yesterday 
cost  you  its  weight  in  phosphate.  The  letter  of 
entreaty  which  you  wrote  last  night  (which  you 


WHAT    CAREER?  87 

should  have  left  till  this  morning)  was  well 
put,  succinct,  and  pathetic ;  and  it  cost  you, 
therefore,  its  weight  in  phosphate.  Your  calcu- 
lation of  the  comet's  orbit  differs  by  two  days 
from  Dr.  Pape's.  You  have  analyzed  your 
work,  and,  in  a  day's  careful  labor,  have  proved 
to  all  men  and  angels  that  you  are  right  and 
that  Dr.  Pape  is  wrong.  Yes,  that  is  very  fine  ; 
but  the  tongs  which  you  put  into  that  white- 
heat  lost  some  little  scales  of  iron  as  you  turned 
over  and  over  the  equations  and  formulas.  The 
triumphant  calculation  cost  your  brain  just  its 
weight  in  phosphate.  Do  not  cheat  the  servant 
or  the  friend  who  has  served  you  so.  Or,  do 
you  count  him  as  a  slave,  do  not  cheat  your- 
self by  starving  him.  And  if  you  mean  to 
work  him  in  that  same  fashion  to-day,  let  him 
have  new  phosphates,  exquisitely  and  carefully 
elaborated  from  the  coffee,  the  chop,  and  the 
bread-and-butter ;  let  the  new  and  the  old  be 
well  introduced  to  each  other,  and  on  good 
social  terms,  before  you  give  the  word  for  new 
duty. 

It  is  not    simply   new   substance,   however, 


88  WHAT    CAREER? 

which  the  brain  requires.  While  we  know 
very  little  about  its  methods,  we  know  that  it 
has  methods  which  it  insists  upon.  We  will 
not  anticipate  the  physiologists  so  far  as  to  say 
it  is  a  Voltaic  battery :  but  this  is  a  guess  so 
well  sustained  now  that  we  might  do  that  with 
reason ;  and  we  may  say  that,  in  the  particular 
matter  with  which  we  are  dealing,  it  works 
with  exactly  the  laws  of  a  Voltaic  battery. 
Those  laws  are  now  matters  understood  in  daily 
practice.  Bear  them  in  mind.  If  you  were 
De  Sauty  working  the  Atlantic  Telegraph,  seek- 
ing the  highest  power  from  your  battery,  and 
the  most  precise  action,  would  you  use  the  very 
same  fluids  to  stimulate  the  plates  month  after 
month,  regardless  of  the  wear  of  the  plates 
and  the  disintegration  of  the  liquid?  Not  at 
all.  You  have  not  only  to  renew  the  plates  at 
certain  periods,  but  you  have,  at  shorter  periods, 
to  renew  the  liquids.  Of  course  you  would 
never  attempt  to  work  without  liquids  in  the 
battery.  As  well  work  without  plates.  Of 
course  you  would  not  be  satisfied,  even  though 
you  had  the  best  double-combination  improved 


WHAT    CAREER?  89 

battery  which  science  ever  invented,  to  work 
by  splashing  a  little  liquid,  whatever  might 
come  along,  on  the  plates  for  a  moment. 
Though  some  result  would  undoubtedly  follow, 
it  would  not  be  the  high-pressure,  extreme- 
tension  result  which  you  are  in  search  of.  You 
would  pour  in,  with  the  utmost  care,  the  liquids 
which  had  been  prepared  with  the  most  accu- 
rate chemistry.  And,  even  then,  you  would 
have  to  wait  for  some  moments,  more  or  less, 
before  the  battery  would  fully  work  on  them, 
or  they  on  the  battery,  and  the  high  action 
begin.  Now,  whether  the  brain  is  or  is  not  a 
battery,  let  the  physiologists  settle.  It  works 
precisely  by  these  laws  which  we  have  stated. 
In  sleep,  for  instance,  it  is  inactive,  if  the  fluids 
elaborated  from  food  are  not  ruthlessly  poured 
upon  it,  in  which  case  it  acts  in  dream  or  night- 
mare. Before  breakfast,  it  is  in  no  condition 
for  active  work.  When  breakfast  comes,  still 
it  must  wait  till  the  elaboration  of  its  precise 
liquid  is  completed.  When  that  is  at  length 
poured  on,  grant  the  few  moments,  more  or 
less,  of  the  electrician,  and  then  you  may  draw 


90  WHAT    CAREER? 

your  sparks,  lift  your  heavy  weights,  telegraph 
to  the  other  side  of  the  world,  or  the  other 
end  of  time,  at  your  pleasure. 

"With  these  mere  hints,  we  close  what  we 
have  to  say  of  the  very  foundation  of  our  sub- 
ject, however  important  that  foundation  may  be. 
In  most  of  the  popular  frenzies  on  the  connec- 
tion of  mind  and  body,  some  piece  of  successful 
treatment  of  disease  is  seized  upon,  and  held  up 
as  the  legitimate  system  to  be  pursued  in  health. 
Because  a  shower-bath  occasionally  gives  to 
a  disordered  system  the  freshness  and  vivacity 
which  it  had  forgotten,  people  tell  you  to  take 
one  every  day,  and  that  you  shall  be  sure  to  be 
fresh  and  alive.  The  experiment  fails.  Be- 
cause a  bon  vivant  gains  spirits  and  energy  when 
he  cuts  off  half  his  luxurious  dinner,  Sylvester 
Graham  tells  him,  virtually,  that  if  he  will  give 
up  the  other  half  he  will  have  twice  as  much 
spirit  and  energy.  And,  in  physical  exercise, 
because  a  man  works  more  lightly  and  happily 
after  a  walk,  or  other  exercise  sufficient  to  pro- 
mote digestion  and  renew  appetite,  we  are  told 
to  work  like  Hercules  in  a  gymnasium,  and  to 


WHAT    CAREER?  91 

walk  like  Captain  Walker  in  the  training- 
ground.  All  this  is  absurd.  If  a  man  wants 
to  work  with  his  mind,  he  only  wastes  food, 
time,  and  life  by  bringing  his  body  up  to  the 
mark  of  a  blacksmith's  or  a  boxer's.  He  neither 
needs  to  run  a  mile  in  five-thirty,  nor  to  lift  six 
hundred  pounds,  nor  to  walk  up  to  the  house- 
top by  the  lightning-rod.  He  wants  exercise 
enough  to  keep  him  in  high  spirits,  good  appe- 
tite, and  that  absolute  health  which  almost  for- 
gets there  is  a  body  to  be  cared  for.  The  truth 
is,  that  a  prime  condition  of  vivid  intellectual 
labor  is  that  one  give  as  little  attention  as  is 
practicable  to  the  tools  with  which  he  works. 
And,  just  as  the  mower  loses  repute  for  mowing 
who  is  constantly  setting  his  scythe  anew,  or 
stopping  to  sharpen  it;  and  just  as  he  advances 
more  slowly  than  the  more  skilful  workman  who 
does  not  complain  of  his  tools,  —  the  mental 
artisan  who  works  lightly  in  the  harness  with 
which  it  has  pleased  God  to  clothe  his  spirit,  ad- 
vances with  most  success  and  most  rapidity.  It 
is  folly  to  pretend  there  are  no  tools.  It  is  folly 
to  leave  them  to  rust  in  the  meadow  over  night. 


92  WHAT    CAREER? 

It  is  folly  to  pretend  there  is  no  harness.  It  is 
folly  to  leave  the  harness  without  oiling  it. 
But  it  is  worse  folly  to  spend  all  one's  life  in 
sharpening  one's  scythe,  or  in  beautifying  the 
traces  or  the  collar. 

We  shall  leave,  for  a  like  reason,  without  any 
notice,  the  questions  regarding  diet:  how  the 
food  should  be  concocted  which  is  to  renew  the 
plates  of  our  battery,  if  it  be  a  battery ;  and 
how  the  liquids,  which  are  to  be  poured  on  it  to 
excite  its  motion.  Bearing  in  mind  the  golden 
injunction  which  we  have  quoted,  —  that  we 
may  eat  much  as  we  please,  if  we  do  not  make 
food  too  much  the  subject  of  after-meditation ; 
that  the  brain-stomach  is  most  likely  to  digest 
our  food  for  us  when  we  do  not  make  the 
stomach-brain  weigh  it,  analyze  it,  account  for 
it,  and  justify  it ;  resolving  that  we  will  not 
thus  try  to  think  cake  and  eat  cake  too,  — we 
do  not  discuss  the  relative  merits  of  coffee,  tea, 
matt*?,  cocoa,  or  guarana,  in  their  province  of 
reproducing  brain,  which  is,  according  to  Liebig, 
their  duty  in  the  economy  of  civilization.  Swe- 
denborg  wrote  his  oracles  on  coffee ;  and  so, 


WHAT    CAREER?  93 

they  say,  did  Agassiz  his.  Most  poor  sermons 
are  written  on  tea,  and,  they  say,  some  good 
ones.  We  have  read  capital  editorials  which 
were  written  on  shells ;  we  have  heard  that  the 
high  law-officers  in  England  are  detected  with 
ale  when  they  are  caught  at  luncheon  ;  and  we 
know  that  Anacreon  says  that  the  best  is  water. 
Into  that  discussion  we  do  not  go. 

II.  We  have  reached  a  much  more  interest- 
ing part  of  our  subject,  where,  however,  all 
the  authorities  in  print  begin  to  fail  us  sadly. 
We  may  call  it  the  internal  economy  of  mental 
action.  It  seeks  light  on  the  best  methods 
and  proportions  of  work,  either  in  varying  men- 
tal processes,  or  in  holding  steadily  to  one. 
It  involves,  also,  the  questions  as  to  the  real 
maxima  of  intellectual  effectiveness.  On  these 
subjects  the  monkish  authorities  have  but  little 
to  say.  The  truth  is  that  their  work  did  not 
admit  of  much  variety.  It  was  simply  the 
steady  plodding  on  of  uncritical  readers,  or  of 
self-satisfied  writers,  who  were  in  no  dread  of 
criticism.  The  German  scholars  also  have  wide 


94  WHAT    CAREER? 

reputation  as  great  workmen,  but  we  are  dis- 
posed to  challenge  that  too.  When  it  is  said 
that  Heyne  worked  twenty  hours  three  days  in 
the  week,  and  twenty-four  hours  on  the  inter- 
mediate days,  —  and  this  is  said  of  Heyne,  —  a 
quality  of  work  is  meant  much  of  which  does 
not  deserve  the  name.  These  pundits  go  into 
their  rooms,  and  call  all  that  is  done  there 
work,  if  it  only  involve  reading.  The  news- 
paper counts  for  work,  or  the  last  novel  or  re- 
view. We  have  known  similar  self-deception 
nearer  home,  but  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  it 
in  this  paper.  We  are  discussing  simply  the 
action  of  the  mind  which  directly  aims  at  some 
new  evolution  of  truth,  or  some  new  presenta- 
tion of  truth  evolved  before.  The  student  is  at 
work  if  he  is  presenting  truth  in  new  forms  to 
himself,  or  if  he  is  attempting  to  present  it  in 
new  forms  to  others.  But,  exactly  as  copying 
does  not  come  within  our  idea  of  intellectual 
work,  because  the  workman  there  only  repeats 
for  others  truth  already  evolved,  in  an  unchanged 
form,  mere  reading  or  acquisition  of  information 
undigested  comes  as  little  within  it.  For  here 


WHAT    CAREER?  95 

the  workman  only  repeats  to  himself  the  result 
of  the  study  of  others.  The  workman,  in  both 
cases,  works  mechanically.  In  fact,  mere  read- 
ing is  the  greatest  of  intellectual  luxuries.  If 
there  is  any  difficulty  in  understanding  an  au- 
thor, of  course  an  element  of  labor  comes  in, 
as  when  one  reads  in  a  language  not  perfectly 
familiar  to  him.  But  where  the  reading  is  per- 
fectly intelligible,  it  is  not  to  be  ranked  as  intel- 
lectual work.  It  will  undoubtedly  fatigue  eye 
and  brain ;  but  the  fatigue  to  the  brain  is  the 
very  minimum  involved  in  any  mental  action. 
As  the  German  epicure  said  he  could  eat  larks 
all  day,  any  man  or  woman  may  say  he  can 
read  all  the  time  he  can  spare  from  his  meals, 
his  digestion,  and  his  other  physical  exercises. 
If  it  tire  his  eyes,  that  is  merely  a  bodily  affair. 
We  do  not  therefore  take  mere  reading  into 
the  account  of  the  mental  effort  which  we  are 
considering. 

A  popular  writer l  succinctly  stated  the  moral 
aspect  of  the  maximum  of  work  in  the  following 
words,  in  a  newspaper  article :  "  No  man  has 

1  Mr.  Thomas  Drew. 


96  WHAT    CAREER? 

a  right  to  incur  more  fatigue  in  a  day  than  the 
sleep  of  the  next  night  will  recover  from." 

As  a  general  rule,  we  conceive  that  this  state- 
ment is  the  true  one.  There  are  exceptions,  or 
course,  when  generals  must  march  their  men  by 
forced  marches,  but  they  are  exceptions  to  be 
permitted  with  the  greatest  care.  The  inten- 
tional violation  of  the  rule  is  simply  suicide 
by  inches.  The  man  who  wakes  to-day  con- 
scious that  he  overworked  yesterday,  because  lie 
finds  he  is  not  up  to  yesterday  morning's  work- 
ing mark,  has  run  back  just  so  far  in  his  own 
life.  There  seems  no  moral  distinction  between 
the  act,  if  it  were  intentional,  and  the  aot 
by  which,  instead  of  injuring  his  brains  a  little, 
he  should  injure  them  a  great  deal  in  blowing 
them  away.  The  regular  recurrence  of  night 
and  day  seems  to  be  so  adapted  to  the  human 
constitution  of  mind  and  body,  that  we  must 
put  ourselves  under  regulations  of  this  sort 
dependent  upon  it.  And  as  no  man  eats  one 
great  breakfast  Sunday,  expecting  to  lunch 
Tuesday  for  the  week,  to  take  the  week's  exer- 
cise Wednesday,  to  dine  once  for  all  Thursday, 


WHAT    CAREER?  97 

to  take  a  twenty-four  hour  siesta  on  Friday,  and 
a  protracted  cup  of  tea  Saturday,  all  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  a  week's  night  of  sleep ;  as  every 
man  admits  that  the  regimen  of  the  body  is  to 
be  regulated  by  cycles  of  twenty-four  hours 
each,  —  we  hold  that  every  man  must  use  his 
mind  in  the  same  way.  It  must  come  up  to 
time,  as  the  Ring  says,  every  morning  fresh  and 
bright,  as  if,  indeed,  it  were  new-born,  if  we 
mean  to  get  from  it  the  maximum  of  vivacity 
and  power.  The  great  tours  deforce  invariably 
prove  this.  A  newspaper  reporter  will  tell  you 
of  specific  feats  in  which  he  wrote  steadily,  in 
the  most  fatiguing  form  of  writing,  perhaps  for 
fourteen  consecutive  hours.  So  will  turfmen 
tell  you  of  horses  who  have  been  driven  with- 
out stopping  for  as  many.  But  neither  of  them 
will  tell  you  that  the  week  in  which  those  hours 
were  included  came  up  to  the  average  steady 
work  of  the  mind,  or  the  horse,  concerned. 

No  more  work  is  to  be  done  in  a  day  than  the 

night's  sleep  will  recover  from.      That  is  the 

first  rule.     So  far  the  sun,  Ammon  Re",  is  the  lord 

of  this  business,  as  the  Egyptians  regarded  him. 

5 


98  WHAT    CAEEER  ? 

So  much  of  subdivision  is  mapped  out  for 
a  man  in  the  calendar  as  matter  of  morals. 
And,  as  the  calendar  marks  Sunday  with  red 
letters  for  him,  he  is  to  throw  that  also  out  from 
his  list  of  working-days,  except  as  the  priests 
in  the  temple  profaned  the  Sabbath  and  were 
blameless.  If  a  man's  profession  make  him  work 
on  Sundays,  —  as  does  a  daily  editor's,  or  his 
printer's,  or  a  chorister's,  or  organist's,  or  other 
minister's,  —  let  him  make  allowance  for  that  va- 
riation by  taking  his  rest-day  on  some  other  day 
of  the  week:  best  on  Saturday,  so  far  as  the 
arrangements  of  modern  life  suggest  the  resting- 
day  for  the  exceptional  classes  we  have  named. 
There  is  no  difficulty  in  advancing  thus  far  in 
the  regulation  of  working-time.  But  in  further 
subdivision,  where  we  have  the  moral  question, 
the  ground  is  more  difficult,  the  lights  less  fre- 
quent, and  the  authorities  are  more  at  variance. 
Dr.  Andrew  P.  Peabody,  an  excellent  guide, 
tells  us  in  his  Discourse  before  the  Divinity 
School  Alumni,  that  every  man  who  works  with 
his  mind  "should  have  a  vocation  and  an  avo- 
cation." That  is  to  say,  to  avoid  the  fatigue 


WHAT    CAREER?  99 

of  monotony,  or  the  danger  of  any  of  the  forms 
of  monomania,  from  despondency  up  to  the 
acme  of  that  disease,  let  a  man  be  sure  that 
his  daily  duty  has,  at  least,  two  sides  to  it. 
When  he  has  worked  enough  at  the  one,  let 
him  work  in  turn  at  the  other.  Be  it  observed, 
this  is  a  rule  for  alternating  forms  of  work. 
We  say  nothing  as  yet  of  play.  The  rule,  as 
an  empirical  rule,  proves  itself  true.  It  would 
prove  itself  true  in  practice,  even  in  the  limited 
view  which  our  subject  takes,  —  a  much  nar- 
rower one  than  the  broad  view  of  professional 
life  which  Dr.  Peabody  was  considering.  For 
if  we  only  regarded  mental  efficiency  and  vi- 
vacity, it  would  prove  better  for  a  man  to  have 
two  subjects  of  mental  effort,  which  should  en- 
gage him  alternately,  than  one  alone.  As  mat- 
ter of  practice,  most  thinkers,  or  most  students, 
would  admit  this.  But  what  is  the  principle 
on  which  this  rule  rests,  —  and  how  far  may  we 
make  the  rule  go?  First,  as  to  the  principle. 
Are  there  different  sets  of  mental  faculties,  as 
the  phrenologists  say,  so  bounded  and  contrasted 
that  it  rests  one  set  to  have  you  put  another  set 


100  WHAT    CAREER? 

in  motion,  —  as  they  used  to  tell  us  that  a 
blacksmith,  after  striking  with  his  arms  all 
day,  rested  himself  with  dancing?  When,  for 
instance,  one  has  been  loving  his  children  in- 
tensely for  an  hour,  does  it  rest  him  to  do  sums 
in  the  rule  of  three  for  an  hour,  and  then  will 
he  rest  himself  more  by  remembering  the  roots 
of  the  Greek  numerals  for  an  hour  more  ?  We 
do  not  believe  he  will.  We  believe  this  whole 
theory  of  the  rotation  of  mental  crops  to  be  a 
mistake.  The  true  rotation  is  precisely  akin  to 
that  of  the  rotation  of  vegetable  crops.  The 
old  notion  was,  that  the  land  which  had  been 
cultivated  for  wheat  rested  when  you  put  it  in 
clover,  and  rested  more  when  you  put  it  in 
turnips  ;  so  that  it  was  with  perfect  enthusiasm 
that  in  the  fourth  year  it  received  wheat  again, 
and  that  it  then  produced  wheat  as  never  be- 
fore. The  truth  was,  that  that  land  never 
rested  at  all.  The  clover  took  up  elements 
which  the  wheat  had  left,  and  the  turnips  found 
such  as  both  had  left.  But  if  the  clover  and 
the  turnips  had  been  carried  off  the  ground, 
when  the  wheat  came  again  in  the  fourth  year 


WHAT    CAREER?  101 

of  the  rotation  to  the  dinner  which  had  been 
warmed  over  twice  for  these  different  guests, 
it  found  but  poor  picking  left.  And  it  proves 
that  the  system  of  rotation,  undoubtedly  well 
founded,  requires  for  its  correct  use  that  one  or 
more  years  shall  be  virtually  years  of  rest.  The 
best  rest  is  that  which  is  given  when  a  crop  is 
planted,  permitted  to  grow,  and  ploughed  back 
into  the  ground.  At  all  events,  nothing  must 
be  carried,  in  the  rest-year,  from  the  field.  We 
believe  this  to  be  just  as  true  of  intellectual 
croppings.  You  undoubtedly  gain  by  varying 
your  vocation  with  an  avocation  ;  perhaps  you 
gain  then  by  what  we  have  heard  called  a 
"  third,"  —  some  third  pursuit,  which  may  be 
called  an  avocation  of  the  second  power.  But 
you  have  only  a  very  limited  line  of  relief  in 
this  direction.  It  is  undoubtedly  exhausted 
when  you  have  come  to  the  "  third,"  —  and 
very  soon  you  must  give  to  the  soil  you  are 
drawing  from  the  complete  rest  of  a  fallow, 
or  of  hours  spent  for  its  own  re-creation  only. 
It  is  probable  that  the  impression  that  passive 
qualities  are  rested  because  others  are  at  work, 


102  WHAT    CAREER? 

is  false.  The  blacksmith  does  not  rest  himself 
by  dancing,  or  reading,  or  playing  checkers. 
He  may  di-vert  himself  thus,  but  he  does  not 
re-create  himself.  To  re-create  himself  he  is 
more  apt  to  eat  his  dinner,  to  drink  his  tea,  to 
smoke  his  pipe,  or  to  go  to  sleep.  In  all  which 
experiments  but  one,  he  shows  his  practical 
knowledge  of  physiology. 

It  is  true  that  the  facility  with  which  different 
minds  change  from  subject  to  subject,  is  one  of 
the  traits  of  character  in  which  men  are  most 
unlike  each  other.  We  are  the  more  restricted 
in  our  discussion  of  it.  The  word  "  versatility  " 
has  been  invented  to  express  a  high  degree  of 
this  facility.  It  is  to  be  observed,  however, 
that  because  Lord  Brougham  can  discuss  Nat- 
ural Theology,  Criminal  Law,  and  any  thing 
else  in  the  Cyclopaedia,  with  equal  ease,  when 
Tie  chooses,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  will  choose 
to  work  on  three  such  subjects  in  the  same  hour 
or  in  the  same  day.  Our  own  conviction  is 
that  he  will  prefer  to  do  all  his  work  on  one 
in  one  day,  and  all  his  work  on  another  in  an- 
other day,  perhaps  in  another  month  or  year. 


WHAT    CAREER?  103 

All  reputations  for  versatility  are  to  be  studied 
with  reference  to  this  distinction.  The  ease 
with  which  Mr.  Charles  Mathews  or  Mr.  Pro- 
teus Love  drops  behind  a  table,  and  reappears 
instantly  as  an  old  woman  instead  of  a  young 
man,  as  we  saw  him  just  before,  is  indeed  amus- 
ing to  the  spectator.  But  it  is  not  a  valuable 
accomplishment.  Even  as  a  bit  of  costume,  the 
old  woman's  dress  or  the  young  man's  would 
prove  badly  adapted  for  practical  purposes.  In 
the  same  manner,  the  versatility  which  works 
its  wonders  in  mental  work  within  an  hour  is 
a  gift  as  amusing,  and  in  some  points  perhaps 
proves  convenient  ;  yet  the  work  it  does  is  of 
but  poor  quality  after  the  first  change  or  two. 
Homer  characterizes  this  quality,  when  he  says 
of  Margites,  — 


.'  ijirlffraTo  <=pya,,  HULKUS  5"  ifiriffTOLTo  irdira. 
"He  knew  a  great  many  things,  —  but  he  knew  all  of  them 
badly." 

The  versatility,  however,  of  which  Mr.  James 
Martineau's  various  scholarly  work  seems  so 
good  an  illustration,  —  of  a  mind  which  occu- 
pies itself  heartily  with  one  subject  till  it  can 


104  WHAT    CAREER? 

make  to  the  world  some  statement  of  real  value 
regarding  it,  and  then  grapples  with  like  force 
with  a  subject  wholly  different,  is  a  versatility 
without  which  the  world  would  lose  almost  the 
blessings  which  it  wins  from  its  heroes. 

Work  without  interruption,  then,  while  you 
work,  till  the  day's  task  is  done.  That  is  the 
rule  for  gaining  the  maximum  of  the  best  work 
of  which  the  particular  mind  concerned  is  cap- 
able. Between  the  vocation  and  the  avocation 
there  is  fair  opportunity  for  a  pause,  which  may 
be  hours  long  if  necessary.  But  when  work  is 
once  begun  on  one  subject,  it  should  not  be 
suspended  till  the  day's  contribution  has  been 
rendered.  In  "  Miss  Martineau's  Travels"  is 
Dr.  Channing's  statement  on  this  point,  —  not 
repeated,  if  we  remember,  in  his  Life.  He  says 
that  the  first  hour  of  composition  is  to  him  very 
painful,  —  that  the  work  grows  easier  and  easier 
as  the  hour  advances,  but  that  only  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  second  hour  does  he  begin  to 
work  at  ease  and  cheerfully.  The  experience 
again  reminds  us  of  what  we  see  in  a  Voltaic 
battery,  of  the  irregular,  almost  spasmodic  la- 


WHAT    CAREER?  105 

bor  of  the  cells  when  work  begins,  and  the 
gradual  regularity,  and  even  passion,  which  in 
a  short  time  the  process  obtains.  Now  the 
practical  remark  of  importance  is  that,  if  the 
work  be  thoroughly  interrupted,  all  this  initial 
difficulty  has  to  be  passed  through  again.  It  is 
exactly  as  if  the  battery  be  lifted  from  the  liquid 
long  enough  for  its  plates  to  dry.  The  bore 
who  says,  "  I  will  not  interrupt  you,  I  only 
want  two  minutes,"  speaks  like  a  fool.  The 
two  minutes  involve  as  completely  a  new  initia- 
tion of  the  mental  process  as  two  months  would 
do.  He  might  as  well  say,  "  I  am  not  going  to 
break  your  mirror  into  pieces  far  apart,  —  I 
will  only  separate  the  bits  by  a  crack  of  a 
millionth  of  an  inch."  You  do  not  want  the 
mirror  broken  at  all.  And  you  must  not  have 
the  mental  process  broken  at  all,  whether  of 
mathematics,  of  logic,  of  historical  research, 
of  the  reconstruction  of  lost  historical  truth,  of 
illustration  by  poetry,  or  of  composition  for 
conviction,  if  it  is  to  be  your  best  process.  It 
must  begin  and  work  steadily  to  its  own  self- 
appointed  close.  There  is  not  the  slightest  un- 
5* 


106  WHAT    CAREER? 

certainty  when  that  close  comes.  You  know  it 
yourself  when  you  feel  it.  And  then,  after  such 
pause  as  you  like,  the  a-vocation  must  begin. 

It  is  said  that  the  musical  critics  can  tell  in 
Mozart's  Requiem  at  what  points  he  went  to 
sleep  in  its  composition,  and  was  waked  by  his 
wife  to  begin  again.  We  have  no  doubt  this 
is  true.  A  truly  sympathetic  criticism  would 
show  of  almost  any  fine  literary  composition 
where  the  work  was  suspended  and  where  it 
began  again,  —  where  Homer  nodded.  If  in 
any  case  this  seems  impossible,  it  is  probably 
because  the  work  is  all  mosaic:  the  mental 
process  was  broken  so  often,  that  it  is  patched 
all  through,  and  nowhere  rises  to  the  severity 
or  the  simplicity  of  an  intaglio  in  an  unbroken 
gem. 

This  principle  of  intellectual  effort  seems  to 
us  to  decide  the  question  as  to  the  number  of 
a-vocations,  or  sides  to  a  man's  daily  duty. 
Two  sides  will  probably  exhaust  his  working- 
power  for  a  day.  The  "  third "  to  which  we 
have  alluded  should,  in  our  opinion,  be  thrown 
wholly  into  the  part  of  the  day  allotted  to 


WHAT    CAREER?  107 

amusement,  and  should  be  of  no  character  re- 
quiring energy,  will,  or  vivacity  even.  It  ought 
not  even  to  involve  physical  fatigue  beyond  the 
requirements  for  the  day's  bodily  exercise.  Do 
not  play  chess  for  a  diversion  to  intellectual 
labor.  Do  not  read  history  merely  because  you 
like  to.  Do  not  read  any  thing  grave  enough 
to  require  what  Capel  Lofft  calls  re-flection,  — 
the  turning  back  over  the  passage  to  determine 
whether  you  agree  with  the  author  or  no.  Do 
not  persuade  yourself  that  a  fatiguing  walk  will 
rest  your  brain.  It  is  only  so  much  drain  on 
phosphates  of  the  muscles,  and  you  must  repro- 
duce phosphate  for  the  brain  before  you  can  go 
to  work  again.  Do  not  pretend  to  be  virtuous, 
in  short,  by  passing  any  labor  into  currency  as 
if  it  were  play.  You  had  better  go  to  the 
theatre,  or  to  the  opera,  if  these  are  not  as  hard 
work  to  you  as  they  seem  to  be  to  most  per- 
formers. Play  cards.  Dance.  Listen  to  music. 
Laugh.  Sit  on  a  rail-fence  and  see  how  green 
the  grass  is,  and  how  blue  the  sky.  New  Eng- 
land undertook,  a  generation  ago,  to  smuggle 
the  Lyceum  into  the  place  of  the  drama,  and 


108  WHAT    CAREER? 

grind  a  few  axes  in  the  way  of  instruction  when 
she  pretended  to  be  amusing  her  work-people. 
Human  nature  took  its  revenge,  however.  And 
it  has  been  years  since  a  Lyceum  Lecture  of  the 
popular  class  instructed  anybody,  called  for  any 
thought,  or  indeed  fatigued  any  one  but  the 
lecturer.  All  which  is  as  it  should  be. 

We  have  said  that  the  time  to  stop  work 
showed  itself.  As  soon  as  the  vital  current 
enlivening  study  or  composition  flags,  this  time 
has  come.  If  the  student  looks  at  his  watch,  or 
shakes  his  hour-glass,  or  in  any  way  feels  mis- 
trust of  his  subject  or  himself,  the  battery  is 
losing  power,  and  the  direction  of  its  activity 
should  be  changed.  This  is  the  time  for  the 
a-vocation  to  come  in.  We  need  not  say  that 
the  more  unlike  its  processes  to  those  of  the 
vocation,  the  better  for  all  concerned.  If  one 
have  involved  writing,  let  the  other  be  mainly 
reading.  If  the  one  have  been  fine  art,  let  the 
other  be  mathematical,  or  historical,  or,  in  a 
word,  as  different  as  it  can  be.  In  our  judg- 
ment, by  the  time  the  a-vocation  rings  its  alarm- 
bells  in  its  turn,  and  asks,  as  the  Jacquard  loom 


WHAT    CAREER?  109 

does  in  like  junctures,  for  a  change  of  color,  it 
is  time  for  the  workman  to  stop  mental  work 
for  that  day.  Let  his  exercise  begin,  or  his 
diversion,  his  social  life,  or  that  general  pot- 
pourri of  undetermined  existence  in  which  most 
of  us  spend  most  of  our  hours  ;  directed  not  by 
ourselves  but  by  destiny,  —  by  the  post-office, 
the  almanac,  the  pig  escaped,  the  cows  in  the 
cornfield,  the  agreeable  Englishman  who  has 
come  with  a  letter  of  introduction,  or  the  unfor- 
tunate missionary  to  the  Ojibways  who  wants 
to  know  how  he  is  to  educate  three  promising 
young  men.  The  day's  mental  work  is  done, 
when  the  first  mental  a-vocation  after  the  voca- 
tion begins  to  drag. 

It  is  perfectly  idle  to  attempt  to  say  how  long 
the  day's  mental  work  will  continue  before  this 
limit  is  attained.  It  will  vary  with  different 
minds,  of  course,  and  it  will  vary  in  the  same 
mind,  with  the  class  of  work  done,  and  the 
degree  of  concentration  required.  The  tours  de 
force  of  which  the  human  mind  is  capable  are 
so  extravagant  that  they  can  hardly  be  over- 
stated. A  hard-working  physician  in  an  epi- 


110  WHAT    CAREER? 

demic  will  keep  on  his  beat  twelve  hours, 
working  down  two  or  three  horses  in  that  time 
in  his  duties  in  a  large  city.  But  he  is  committing 
suicide  all  the  time,  and  in  this  case  scarcely  by 
inches.  The  gentlemen  of  the  bar  sit  in  their 
offices,  or  in  court,  nearly  as  long,  for  continued 
periods.  But  much  of  each  day  is  not  work  in 
that  duty.  Our  own  observation  of  as  broad 
range  of  lives  as  have  left  us  their  memoranda, 
would  decide  that  three  hours  is  as  high  a  max- 
imum as  an  average  mind  can  seek,  for  the 
average  of  its  concentrated  daily  effort,  of  six 
days'  work  in  a  week,  and  fifty-two  weeks  in  a 
year.  This  is  Sir  Edward  Lytton's  statement ; 
Scott's  was  even  lower  than  this.  The  British 
Commission  on  Education  has  often  reported, 
what  we  have  no  doubt  is  true,  that  with  chil- 
dren, at  the  end  of  three  hours'  faithful  study, 
the  power  of  acquiring  is,  in  general,  at  the  end 
for  that  day.  That  is  to  say,  the  child  could 
learn  in  three  hours,  well  used,  all  that  it  does 
learn  in  the  six  you  keep  it  in  school.  We  have 
no  doubt  this  is  true  for  children.  We  should 
put  the  acquiring  power  of  men  and  women 


WHAT    CAREER?  Ill 

rather  higher,  perhaps ;  but  the  average  of  all 
kinds  of  highly  concentrated  mental  work  is 
probably  fully  stated  as  three  hours  a  day. 

But  alas !  in  saying  that  the  man  who  works 
with  his  brains  ought,  for  the  best  work  which 
he  can  do,  to  work  on  only  two  lines  of  work 
every  day,  we  do  but  demand  an  impossibility, 
if  we  be  speaking  of  modern  civilization.  Per- 
haps they  work  so  in  Arcadia,  though  Dr. 
Wordsworth  makes  no  mention  of  any  clergy- 
men, lawyers,  or  critics  whom  he  found  there. 
We  have  heard  it  said  that  in  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  before  that  city  and  State  were  in- 
cluded in  the  organism  of  the  world,  no  man 
did  but  one  thing  in  a  day.  At  dinner  you 
conversed  on  the  day's  employment.  "  I,"  said 
one,  "  went  to  Russell's  for  my  umbrella,  which 
I  left  there  yesterday."  "  I,"  said  another, 
"  called  at  the  news-room."  "  I,"  said  a  third, 
"  made  my  compliments  to  Mr.  Frazer,  and 
saw  his  last  picture."  And  the  man  who  had 
done  one  thing  in  a  forenoon  deserved  well 
of  his  country  and  posterity.  Now  that  South 
Carolina  also  manures  her  fields,  pays  her 


112  WHAT    CABEER? 

laborers,  shoots  her  voters,  and  approaches 
modern  civilization  in  other  points  of  prac- 
tice, good  and  bad,  there  is  left  no  such  sim- 
plicity of  civilization  anywhere.  The  man  who 
has  brains,  who  should  start  on  the  determi- 
nation that  he  would  every  day  devote  him- 
self to  two  subjects  only,  would  soon  be  shut 
up  by  his  neighbors  in  the  same  palace  with 
those  who  have  none.  Men  must  devote 
thought,  and  a  great  deal  of  thought,  to  a  very 
wide  circle  of  inquiries  and  occupations  as  a 
single  day's  work  goes  by.  One  cannot  be 
Saint  Bernard,  or  Duns  Scotus,  if  he  would,  in 
a  world  which  has  advanced  into  the  nineteenth 
century  of  the  enlivenment  of  its  life.  To 
speak  only  of  the  invention  of  the  post-office, 
—  of  which  the  advantages  have  never  been  so 
demonstrated  as  to  leave  it  beyond  question 
whether  the  curse  it  inflicts  is  not  greater, — 
correspondence  alone  is  enough  to  destroy  the 
ideal  system  of  daily  mental  activity  which  we 
have  tried  to  describe. 

"  Correspondence  is  the   burden    of  modern 
civilization,"  says  Saint-Marc  Girardin.     He  is 


WHAT    CAREER?  113 

describing  the  life  of  luxury  which  the  first 
families  of  Rome  led  in  their  sea-shore  homes  in 
the  centuries  which  Gibbon  calls  the  happiest 
in  the  history  of  the  world.  On  the  other  hand, 
most  men  of  affairs  tell  us  to-day  that  it  is  per- 
sonal presence  only  which  moves  men  now, 
letters  going  so  easily  where  printed  circulars 
go  of  course,  into  the  waste-basket,  or  more 
directly  into  the  fire.  Yet  the  world  has  not 
yet  learned  this  truth ;  if  it  be  truth,  and  cor- 
respondence is  still  one  of  our  greatest  burdens. 
It  is  a  burden  which  precisely  illustrates  the 
danger  which  we  have  described,  of  cutting  off 
one  mental  process  to  begin  again  on  another  ; 
of  leaving  to  dry  the  supposed  plates  of  the 
mental  battery,  before  we  set  them  to  work 
again.  It  is  far  more  fatiguing  to  the  mind  to 
write  ten  letters  on  different  subjects  of  impor- 
tance, than  to  write  one  on  the  same  subject  of 
the  same  length  as  all  the  ten.  The  change 
involved  of  method,  of  style,  of  familiarity,  of 
recollections,  calls  so  severely  on  the  mental 
power  employed  as  to  drain  it  to  the  utmost. 
It  would  therefore  be  better,  unquestionably, 


114  WHAT    CAREER? 

always  to  answer  a  letter  as  soon  as  it  is  re- 
ceived, while  the  mind  is  still  occupied  with  the 
subject,  thus  avoiding  break  and  jar.  Letter 
and  answer  would  then  cost  onLy  the  fatigue 
of  hand  required  in  writing.  But  this  would 
shock  people's  prejudices  in  favor  of  second 
thoughts,  there  being  in  the  world  a  suspicion 
that  rowen  is  sometimes  worth  more  than  June 
hay.  And  it  would  make  correspondence  fa- 
tally brisk.  The  railroads  are  bad  enough,  but 
how  terrible  life,  if  every  letter  brought  its 
echo  by  return  mail !  The  practical  way  for  us 
to  regain  the  paradise  of  our  ancestors  in  these 
matters  would  seem  to  be  to  answer  our  letters 
in  the  moment  which  received  them,  and  then 
lay  the  answers  by  for  a  month  before  we 
posted  them.  One  hard-pressed  friend  suggests 
to  us  that  the  invention  of  small  note-paper  is 
the  providential  remedy.  We  have  never  seen 
any  small  enough  to  cure  the  disease.  Another 
studies  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  despatches, 
in  hope  of  attaining  brevity.  Another  has 
blanks  by  which  a  secretary  furnishes  uniform 
answers  to  all  the  people  who  would  like  his 


WHAT    CAREER?  115 

recommendation  for  Chief-Justice,  or,  if  they 
cannot  be  that,  would  be  glad  of  a  subordinate 
commission  in  the  quartermaster's  department. 
But  the  system  of  blanks  goes  only  a  very 
little  way  in  relief.  Another  used  a  manifold 
letter-writer  for  his  letters  of  affection,  and  sent 
them  in  triplicate  to  different  friends.  But  this 
plan  was  upset  when  he  had  one  returned  by  a 
wounded  spirit  not  appreciated.  Members  of 
Congress  sometimes  detail  their  wives  to  write 
their  autographs  for  them.  Mr.  Fillmore  used 
the  best  plan  we  know,  if  the  thing  is  to  be 
done  at  all,  in  dictating  to  a  phonographic  re- 
porter his  letters.  They  were  then  written  out 
at  the  reporter's  leisure,  signed,  and  posted; 
yet  the  original  copies  of  the  letters  were  pre- 
served in  the  phonographic  notes.  Sixty  let- 
ters of  average  length  could  perhaps  thus  be 
dictated  in  an  hour;  but  we  should  say  that 
an  hour  of  such  work  would  be  all  the  concen- 
trated work  any  man  ought  to  do  in  a  day. 
The  most  effective  man  we  ever  knew  never 
answered  any  letters  at  all.  All  that  he  wrote 
were  the  letters  which  affairs  made  necessary 


116  WHAT    CAREER? 

for  the  communication  of  information  to  his 
fellow-laborers.  For  the  rest,  let  them  come 
and  see  him,  —  as,  alas  !  they  did.  It  will  prob- 
ably be  in  this  way  eventually  that  the  "  burden 
of  modern  civilization"  will  be  tipped  off  its 
back  into  the  sea. 

We  need  not  apologize  for  this  excursus  on 
letter-writing,  for  the  illustration  it  furnishes  of 
the  difficult  conditions  imposed  on  mental  effort 
by  modern  barbarism  is  an  illustration  which 
covers  very  wide  ground.  Correspondence  is 
the  most  oppressive  of  a  series  of  demands  made 
on  men  of  affairs  which  interrupt  the  regularity 
of  mental  effort  for  which  any  system  provides. 
And  no  study  of  the  subject  is  in  the  least  ade- 
quate, which  does  not  allude  to  such  external 
demands  and  interruptions.  They  must  be  pro- 
vided for  as  well  as  the  mind's  personal  and  im- 
mediate requisitions.  If  they  cannot  be  resisted 
or  avoided,  the  reply  made  to  the  requisitions 
of  the  mind  itself  must  be  adapted,  as  far  as 
possible,  to  their  rapacity.  We  are  not  bound 
to  travel  into  detail  to  discuss  the  adaptations 
which  will  be  found  the  most  successful.  Every 


WHAT    CAREER?  117 

department  of  mental  effort  has  to  furnish  its 
own ;  the  tricks  by  which  different  hunted  hares 
escape  from  the  hounds  let  loose  upon  them  in 
the  barbarism  in  which  we  live,  —  the  methods 
by  which  men  doing  their  own  duty  meet,  in 
contest  or  in  submission,  the  invaders  who  ask 
them  also  to  do  theirs.  Nor  is  it  fair  to  speak 
as  if  all  such  invasions  of  a  man's  own  plan  of 
life  ought  to  be  avoided  or  evaded.  In  a  world 
where  our  whole  duty  is  to  bear  each  other's 
burdens,  it  ill  becomes  any  man  of  us  to  choose 
the  particular  way  in  which  he  will  bear  them, 
—  the  particular  yoke  which  he  will  carry. 

It  is  evident  that,  if  one  is  to  shift  from  point 
to  point  among  a  multitude  of  important  cares 
in  such  complex  affairs,  the  maximum  of  work- 
ing time  must  be  reduced,  even  below  the  poor 
three  hours  which  we  have  given  as  the  average 
of  daily  exertion.  Baron  Rothschild,  who  may 
be  supposed  to  have  arranged  as  nicely  as  any 
man  can  the  methods  for  disposing  rapidly  of 
demands  made  on  his  thought,  is  said  to  meet 
them  thus.  He  stands  in  a  central  office,  in  his 
place  of  affairs,  where  he  can  speak,  if  necessary, 


118  WHAT    CAREER? 

to  his  heads  of  department.  Those  who  have 
personal  business  with  him  are  bidden  to  pre- 
pare in  writing  what  they  would  say ;  they  are 
introduced,  and  give  to  him  or  read  to  him  the 
memorandum.  He  answers  ;  and  the  conversa- 
tion, if  any  is  necessary,  follows,  both  standing. 
Brevity  is  attempted  by  the  two  expedients  of  a 
standing  position  and  of  written  inquiry.  How 
necessary  this  is,  any  clergyman  will  say  who 
has  known  a  visitor  take  three  hours  in  saying 
he  wants  to  be  married.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  value  of  personal  presence  is  not  lost,  and 
the  assistants,  if  necessary,  are  within  call. 
Thus  a  hundred  visitors,  perhaps,  are  disposed 
of  in  a  forenoon.  Concentration  could  hardly 
go  farther.  We  have  described  these  details 
to  say  that  it  would  evidently  be  impossible  to 
work  in  that  way,  even  up  to  our  poor  little 
average  of  three  hours  daily.  The  more  varied 
the  subjects  of  work  so  highly  concentrated,  the 
shorter  must  its  period  necessarily  be. 

Of  the  palliatives  possible  for  the  relief  of 
the  pressure  of  such  work  as  falls  on  the  student 
or  other  literary  workman,  we  do  not  speak  in 


WHAT    CAREER?  119 

detail,  because  every  condition  of  mental  ac- 
tivity must  of  necessity  provide  its  own.  The 
transferring  of  the  mechanical  operation  of 
writing,  by  those  who  have  much  work  of  com- 
position, to  the  hand  of  an  amanuensis,  is  the 
only  one  of  these  expedients  which  we  are  to 
speak  of  here.  It  does  not  seem  well  to  use 
this  relief  to  the  full,  as  did  an  alderman  of  one 
of  our  chief  cities,  who,  confident  that  he  could 
always  hire  a  reader  to  read  for  him,  and  a  clerk 
to  write  for  him,  neglected  to  acquire  for  him- 
self the  two  accomplishments  of  writing  and 
reading.  There  are  purposes  of  both  accom- 
plishments which  cannot  be  attained  by  proxies. 
So  this  officer  found,  when,  in  an  attempt  to 
escape  from  the  arrest  which  threatened  him, 
because  his  various  writings  were  so  inconsistent 
with  each  other,  he  arrived  at  the  fork  of  two 
roads,  looked  sadly  at  the  finger-post,  whose 
guidance  was  useless  to  him  because  he  was 
without  his  reader ;  and  so  returned  to  meet  the 
sheriff,  and  to  acknowledge  that  there  were 
occasions  when  one  must  do  his  own  reading,  as 
he  had  found  before,  by  the  state  of  his  bank- 


120  WHAT    CAREER? 

books,  that  he  had  better  have  done  some  of  his 
own  writing.  Sentimental  or  exacting  corre- 
spondents, too,  are  apt  to  expect  that  a  letter 
shall  be  in  the  handwriting  of  the  author.  To 
meet  this  difficulty,  the  English  offices  have 
clerks  in  readiness,  who,  in  three  days  after  a 
change  of  ministry,  are  able  to  write  in  the 
handwriting  of  the  new  officials,  and  to  execute 
for  them  their  "  private  and  confidential  memo- 
randa." Without  going  into  such  niceties,  it 
may  be  said  that  any  duty  so  mechanical  as  the 
mere  forming  of  letters  into  words  is  probably 
better  done  by  a  young  person  whose  whole 
attention  is  turned  to  it,  than  it  can  be  by  the 
person  who  is  also  engaged  in  determining  what 
the  words  shall  be.  We  have  no  doubt,  there- 
fore, that,  on  the  whole,  the  employment  of  an 
amanuensis  improves  the  quality  of  the  work 
performed.  It  is  ver}7  true  that,  when  the  ex- 
periment of  dictating  is  first  tried,  the  luxury 
of  the  ease  it  gives  is  apt  to  be  so  great  that  it 
tends  to  looseness  and  verbosity  of  style ;  for 
there  is  no  better  check  on  sesquipedalianism 
than  the  necessity  of  writing  down  one's  sesqui- 


WHAT    CAREER?  121 

peclalian  words  for  one's  self.  And,  in  the 
beginning,  if  one  is  lying  on  a  sofa,  and  using 
another's  hand,  he  puts  in  his  long  words  and 
long  phrases  and  unnecessary  sentences,  in  the 
mere  luxury  of  freedom,  as  the  schoolboy  ca- 
vorts and  plunges  as  he  first  rushes  out  into 
the  open  air.  But  this  is  but  the  incident  of 
a  beginning ;  and,  with  a  little  discipline  and 
criticism,  any  man  can  learn  to  write  with  the 
pen  of  an  amanuensis  in  the  same  style  as  with 
his  own.  Some  of  Scott's  best  novels  were 
written  by  the  hand  of  others ;  some  by  his 
own.  We  would  challenge  the  most  exquisite 
criticism  to  discern  between  the  two  classes 
from  the  mere  internal  evidence  afforded  by 
their  composition. 

We  can  perfectly  well  hear  the  whine  or  the 
snort  of  indignation  with  which  conscious  genius 
has  put  by  our  suggestions  in  this  paper,  long 
before  reading  to  this  point,  where  we  close. 
Conscious  genius  is  very  apt  to  say  that  it  must 
work  without  rules.  It  has  a  good  deal  to  tell 
about  the  tides  of  inspiration ;  and  it  is  prone  to 
6 


122  WHAT    CAREER? 

suppose  that  those  tides  are  very  irregular.  It 
will  ridicule  the  possibility  of  any  science  of 
mental  effort;  it  will  say  that  man  must  wait 
till  he  is  inspired ;  and  that  until  he  is  inspired 
all  effort  is  vain.  It  says  a  great  deal  more  on 
this  subject,  but  in  this  dictum  is  the  pith  of 
the  whole.  Now,  we  are  willing  to  own  that 
we  know  nothing  of  the  methods  of  genius  ex- 
cept as  we  read  of  them  in  the  lives  of  men 
of  genius.  But  from  those  authorities  we  have 
to  remark  that  if  Goethe  and  Schiller,  Walter 
Scott,  even  Byron  and  Bulwer,  are  men  of 
genius,  —  not  to  go  outside  our  own  generation, 
—  genius  is  as  glad  to  work  under  absolute, 
fixed,  and  methodical  conditions  as  is  any  hod- 
carrier.  Even  Byron,  we  say ;  for  when  Byron 
was  engaged  upon  a  poem,  he  knew  perfectly 
well  that  it  would  not  finish  itself,  but  that 
his  persistent  will  must  finish  it.  The  ex- 
traordinary amount  of  work  he  did  finish  in 
his  short  career  is  a  monument  to  the  per- 
sistency and  steadiness  of  his  working  power. 
And  we  doubt  if  there  be  any  touchstone  more 
certain  to  distinguish  between  real  genius  and 


WHAT    CAREER  ?  123 

Brummagem,  than  is  the  test  which  determines 
whether  the  mind  in  question  is  fresh,  vivid, 
and  in  true  condition  for  effort  on  every  blessed 
morning  given  it  by  God ;  or  whether  it  can 
only  boast  certain  fungous  growths  of  gaudy 
color,  but  of  most  perishable  substance,  — which 
spring  up  on  some  mornings,  and  are  nowhere 
to  be  found  on  others, — lawless  and  irregular, 
and  therefore,  if  not  quite  worthless,  quite  un- 
trustworthy. 

The  truth  is  that  all  mental  effort,  like  all 
bodily  effort,  must  fulfil  the  conditions  of  effort 
which  God  has  imposed.  This  is  as  true  of  the 
highest  efforts  of  divine  poetry,  as  it  is  of  the 
daily-bread  work  of  the  mere  artisan  of  letters, 
who  makes  no  pretence  to  genius  or  inspiration. 
We  have  been  speaking,  thus  far,  only  of  the 
two  tools  which  are  employed  —  the  body  and 
the  mind — in  such  endeavor.  But  for  the  soul 
which  employs  them,  if  they  are  to  be  kept  at 
their  full  power,  there  must  be  constant  acces- 
sions of  the  Life  from  which  the  soul  is  born. 
It  is  Life  which  bends  the  fingers  to  the  pen ; 
it  is  Life  which  drives  the  pen  along  the  page  ;  it 


124  WHAT    CAREER? 

is  Life  which  makes  the  page  live  and  teach  its 
lesson.  This  Life  of  the  soul  must  be  renewed 
and  increased  with  every  day  of  the  soul's  ef- 
fort, or  the  page  at  length  ceases  to  glow,  just 
as  the  fingers  fail  to  grasp  the  pen.  The  soul 
must  be,  indeed,  new-born  to  its  daily  work  as 
each  day  comes  round.  The  soul  must  each 
day  reassert  its  mastery  over  body  and  mind, 
without  which  they  are  only  two  rebel  slaves 
setting  in  uproar  the  whole  of  the  soul's  king- 
dom. We  have  said  enough,  perhaps,  to  show 
that,  for  full  mental  power,  this  empire  of  the 
soul  must  be  a  stern  one.  The  soul  must  deny 
the  body  in  its  appetites  of  meat,  of  drink,  even 
of  sleep,  and  of  play.  It  must  cut  off  the  stim- 
ulants which  the  body  would  like.  It  must  in- 
sist on  the  repose  without  which  the  body  dies. 
We  have  seen  also  the  restraints  and  the  com- 
mands which  it  imposes  on  the  mind.  The  mind 
would  gladly  run  in  a  thousand  directions  in 
the  morning's  effort ;  and  the  soul  grimly  holds 
it  to  one  duty,  or,  at  the  most,  to  two.  We 
see,  again,  that  the  soul  does  not  let  off  either 
-  servant  to  a  holiday  because  they  choose  to  beg 


WHAT    CAREER?  125 

for  it.  When  the  hour  of  work  comes,  they 
work ;  when  it  is  at  end,  they  stop.  Whether 
they  like  to  work,  or  like  to  stop,  the  soul 
makes  the  decision.  For  such  absolute  empire, 
the  soul  needs  new  tides  of  Life  daily.  And 
God  has  been  pleased  to  grant  such  tides,  re- 
curring with  the  regularity  of  his  own  sunlight 
if  the  soul  accedes  to  the  conditions.  If  the 
soul  uses  to  his  glory  the  Life  of  to-day,  under 
the  conditions  which  he  has  fixed  for  its  various 
exertions,  he  gives  new  Life  for  the  duties  of 
to-morrow.  The  faithful,  patient  soul  working 
with  him  for  his  infinite  designs  finds  itself  new- 
born as  each  morning  struggles  up  the  sky, 
and,  with  the  freshness  of  new  birth,  enters  on 
the  new  day's  duties,  —  "as  a  little  child " 
indeed.  But  unless  the  soul  accept  the  condi- 
tions, and  unless  it  work  in  the  Father's  work, 
it  has  no  such  renewal,  and  it  has  no  continued 
victory;  any  Hercules  with  whom  it  wrestles 
can  lift  it  from  the  ground,  and,  with  all  its 
struggling,  it  can  get  no  new  strength  for 
conflict.  Vital  power  for  the  objects  of  life ; 
vital  power  sufficient  to  hold  in  constant  check 


126  WHAT    CAEEER? 

the  vagaries  of  the  mind  and  the  appetites  of 
the  body ;  vital  power,  again,  sufficient  to  reani- 
mate every  morning  a  mind  which  has  new 
duties  to  undertake,  and  a  body  which  is  to 
fulfil  meekly  an  imperial  will,  —  is  gained  only 
at  the  fountain  of  Life.  He  has  most  of  that 
power  who  drinks  deepest  at  the  fountain.  He 
who  never  drinks  —  the  Machiavel  or  the  Na- 
poleon—  finds,  before  he  is  done,  that  body 
and  mind  cannot  be  driven  up  to  the  behests  of 
the  will.  He  who  works  with  God  has  God's 
breath  to  renew  him  every  day.  He  who  works 
without  God  finds  his  body  give  way  just  when 
he  needs  it,  or  his  mind  disobedient  when  a 
crisis  comes.  For  his  vital  power  is  diminished 
by  his  every  victory ;  while  the  faithful  child 
of  God  receives  the  promise,  and  with  every 
day  has  "  Life  more  abundantly." 


WHAT    CAREER?  127 


V. 
A     THEOLOGICAL     SEMINARY. 

OOME  school  of  theology  is  allied  to  almost 
every  one  of  our  larger  colleges,  in  more 
or  less  close  relations.  Most  of  the  colleges, 
indeed,  were  established  by  one  or  another  ec- 
clesiastical body.  In  the  lists  published  in  the 
almanacs  and  elsewhere,  they  will  be  found 
marked  with  the  letters  B.,  R.  C.,  E.,  P.,  and 
the  rest,  to  indicate  that  they  are  under  Baptist, 
Roman  Catholic,  Episcopal,  Presbyterian,  or 
other  control.  In  many  of  the  older  colleges, 
the  original  plan  was  the  training  of  young  men 
for  the  Christian  ministry.  In  the  more  recent 
instances  of  colleges  thus  fostered,  the  wish  is 
rather  to  protect  boys  from  the  proselyting  of 
other  sects  ;  to  give  them  a  direction  towards 
the  ministry,  and  such  an  inclination  for  it  as 
may  be  followed  up  in  the  theological  seminary 
or  college  distinctively  so-called.  The  academ- 


128  WHAT    CAREER? 

ical  college  is  no  longer  made  a  place  for  the 
formal  study  of  theology.  Every  denomination 
of  Christians  has  its  own  institutions  for  that 
special  purpose.  Special  societies  for  education 
are  formed,  to  supply  them  with  students.  The 
Presbyterian  Church  in  each  of  its  organiza- 
tions, North,  South,  and  "  United,"  maintains 
such  societies  for  assisting  in  the  education 
of  young  men  in  these  schools.  The  largest  of 
these,  that  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  North, 
expends  nearly  a  quarter  million  annually  in 
this  service.  The  American  Education  Society, 
in  similar  service,  expended  twenty-eight  thou- 
sand dollars  last  year ;  and  the  similar  society 
of  the  Reformed  Dutch  Church,  thirteen  thou- 
sand dollars.  The  various  beneficiary  funds 
which  the  Unitarians  apply  to  like  service,  afford 
about  ten  thousand  dollars  a  year  for  this  pur- 
pose. Under  such  auspices,  there  are  now  in 
this  country  just  one  hundred  theological  schools, 
existing  either  as  independent  institutions  or  as 
the  theological  departments  of  universities. 

What  is  the  reason  why  young  men  do  not  go 
to  these  institutions  in  much  larger  numbers  ? 


WHAT    CAREER?  129 

The  reason,  I  suppose,  is  two-fold.  First,  an 
objection  lies  against  the  method  supposed  to  be 
pursued  in  the  theological  school.  Second,  an 
objection  lies  against  the  profession  to  be  pur- 
sued as  the  result  of  this  method. 

I  am  certain  that  both  these  objections  rest  on 
insufficient  grounds ;  and  I  propose  to  discuss 
them  both,  giving  most  space  to  the  first.  The 
objection  is  taken  on  a  limited  view  of  theologi- 
cal schools  as  they  were :  it  is  certainly  not  to 
be  sustained  by  any  adequate  view  of  the  better 
theological  schools  of  America,  or  the  schools  of 
Germany,  as  they  are. 

If  we  could  look  in  on  the  free  conversation 
of  some  literary  club  or  friendly  gathering  oi 
seniors  in  any  of  -our  colleges,  and  hear  the 
familiar  talk  on  this  subject,  we  should  hear  it 
said,  first,  that  the  young  man  who  goes  to  a 
theological  seminary  goes  pledged  in  advance  to 
certain  convictions,  of  which  he  has  never  ex- 
amined the  grounds  satisfactorily.  To  make  his 
training  at  the  seminary  of  any  practical  use  to 
him,  he  has  got  to  say,  at  the  end  of  the  course, 
that  he  believes  in  each  and  all  of  certain 
6* 


130  WHAT    CAREER? 

formulas  of  doctrine,  regarding  which  he  is,  at 
this  present  moment,  only  partially  informed. 
It  would  be  said  that  no  such  implied  pledge 
restricted  him  in  going  to  a  law  school  or  a 
medical  school.  He  might  believe  opium  to  be 
a  good  drug  in  practice,  or  a  bad  drug ;  and  yet 
no  professor  or  school  would  follow  him  into  the 
world  to  stigmatize  his  practice.  He  might 
come  out  from  a  law  school  wholly  ignorant  of 
nine-tenths  of  the  studies  pursued  there ;  still, 
when  he  nailed  up  his  shingle,  no  president 
of  the  law  school  would  send  messages  after 
him,  to  say  that  his  doctrine  of  mortmain  was 
faulty,  and  that  he  was  quite  unsound  in  the 
theory  of  the  civil  law.  The  young  doctor  or 
the  young  attorney,  it  would  be  said,  is  left  to 
stand  or  fall  on  his  own  merits. 

But  a  young  clergyman,  these  seniors  would 
tell  us,  has  a  very  different  career  in  the  pro- 
fessional school.  Whether  it  be  a  school  of 
thirty-nine  articles,  of  twenty,  or  of  five,  he  is 
expected  from  the  beginning  to  come  out, 
squarely  and  loyally,  the  supporter  of  them  all. 
So  far  as  he  has  received  money  from  any  edu- 


WHAT    CAREER?  131 

cation  society  to  carry  him  through  the  expenses 
of  his  course  there,  he  is  under  a  pledge  of 
honor,  if  not  of  verbal  contract,  to  do  the  duty 
for  which  they  pay  this  money  to  prepare  him. 
And,  if  he  is  under  no  such  formal  pledge,  his 
difficulty  is  the  same.  If,  as  he  goes  forward  in 
his  studies,  he  should  doubt  even  the  least  tittle 
of  the  formulas  put  down  in  the  books,  —  if  he 
should  think  modern  science  had  something  to 
say  which  in  these  books  is  neglected,  —  the 
officers  of  the  school  would  mark  his  dissent. 
It  would  be  their  duty,  indeed,  to  do  so.  And, 
go  where  he  might,  they  would  —  as  from  their 
point  of  view  they  ought  to  do  —  follow  him 
up  with  letter  or  warning  to  this,  that,  or  an- 
other synod,  consistory,  consociation,  or  associa- 
tion, to  say  that,  though  of  admirable  moral 
character,  he  was  unsound  in  faith. 

Now,  young  men  do  not  like  to  enter  on 
a  course  of  study  which,  as  they  suppose,  is 
thus  hampered. 

The  next  thing  we  should  hear  said,  in  such 
talk  of  seniors,  would  be,  that  there  was  nothing 
to  study  in  "  theology  "  that  any  man  was  much 


132  WHAT    CAREER? 

interested  in.  "We  should  hear  that  a  man  must 
"  get  up  "  a  new  language,  —  namely,  Hebrew, 
—  while  he  knew  he  was  not  really  master  of 
Greek,  Latin,  or  the  modern  languages.  Then 
we  should  be  told  that  the  rest  of  the  time  at 
a  theological  school  is  spent  in  studying  Greek 
and  criticising  the  New  Testament ;  in  writing 
sermons  and  in  hammering  over  Calvin's  In- 
stitutes. This  is  about  the  popular  idea  which 
most  seniors  have  of  studying  theology.  The 
men  who  have  really  heard  the  gospel-trumpet 
sound,  who  know  in  their  own  hearts  what  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  because  the  Holy  Spirit  has  spoken 
to  them,  may  have  courage  to  take  on  the  armor 
thus  offered  to  them,  because  they  are  told  it  is 
useful  armor.  Many  of  them  do  take  it  on  ;  but 
the  majority  of  men  solicited  to  take  it,  refuse. 
They  are  Christian  men,  born  again  into  the 
divine  life,  as  truly  as  are  the  young  men  who 
go  into  the  schools  of  theology.  But  they  hesi- 
tate before  attempting  more  Latin  and  Greek, 
before  launching  upon  Hebrew,  before  spend- 
ing three  years  on  what  seem  to  them  merely 
technical  studies.  They  say  what  is  true,  that 


WHAT    CAREER?  133 

there  are  many  ways  in  which  a  man  can  work 
for  the  kingdom  of  God  outside  the  pulpit ; 
and  that,  if  the  pulpit  require  this  preparation, 
other  men  may  take  it,  but  they  will  not.  They 
enter  upon  some  other  profession. 

Now,  in  answer  to  the  impression  which  is 
popular  among  seniors,  and  which  we  have 
attempted  thus  to  describe  in  its  detail,  I  write 
this  essay,  to  show  in  brief  what  a  theological 
school  is,  and  what  it  is  not,  when  it  is  at  work 
on  a  true  footing.  I  say,  in  the  outset,  that 
such  a  theory  of  a  theological  seminary  as  I  have 
described  is  a  gross  caricature  on  any  theological 
seminary  in  this  land.  And  I  say,  next,  that 
when  a  first-class  theological  seminary  of  one  of 
the  liberal  communions  is  contrasted  with  such 
a  theory,  every  one  of  the  objections  which 
young  men  make  to  such  institutions  without 
knowing  what  they  are,  disappears. 

First,  as  to  the  subjects  studied.  I  venture 
the  statement  that  all  the  great  questions  of 
modern  discussion  in  which  the  young  life  of 
this  country  is  specially  interested,  are  nowhere 
studied  in  America  so  thoroughly  as  in  its  best 
theological  seminaries. 


134  WHAT    CAREER? 

Ask  at  the  bookstores  what  those  questions 
are,  or  ask  the  secretary  of  a  debating  club. 
The  answer  will  be,  first,  that  all  the  questions 
regarding  the  creation  of  the  world  and  the  ori- 
gin of  man  are  the  leading  questions,  — evolu- 
tion, protoplasm,  Darwinism  as,  for  convenience, 
people  say.  Every  wide-awake  senior  has  read 
Darwin,  or  the  reviews  of  Darwin,  —  Mivart, 
perhaps :  he  has  read  a  few  articles  on  the  theo- 
ries discussed  by  these  gentlemen  ;  and  the  sub- 
ject involved  has  been  the  subject  of  the  familiar 
discussion  of  the  philosophical  circles  among 
young  men. 

Now,  where  is  a  man  to  study  this  subject  ? 
Where,  in  the  first  place,  can  he  get  the  books 
about  it,  —  German,  French,  and  English  ?  He 
will  find  them  in  a  well-furnished  theological 
library.  He  will  not  find  them  anywhere  else. 

In  the  second  place,  if  he  wants  to  find  any 
professor  vitally  interested  in  the  study,  who 
will  manfully  introduce  it  into  his  courses,  and 
give  the  last  word  of  science  with  regard  to  it, 
as  well  as  the  view  which  science  has  taken  of  it 
for  twenty-five  hundred  years,  he  must  seek 


WHAT    CAREER?  135 

that  professor  in  a  theological  seminary.  He 
may  find  the  man  in  what  is  called  a  scientific 
college ;  but  he  will  not  find  there  any  course 
of  lectures  devoted  to  such  subjects.  The  bread- 
and-butter  studies  pursued  there  do  not  permit 
much  use  of  time  in  speculation.  Precisely  the 
line  of  speculation  in  which  at  this  moment  the 
world  is  most  interested  is,  from  the  nature 
of  the  case, — because  it  is  speculation,  and 
is  not  what  is  called  practical,  —  shut  out  from 
all  the  American  schools  except  the  theological 
seminaries.  They  are,  and  for  a  long  time  must 
be,  our  only  schools  of  pure  philosophy. 

Take  another  set  of  questions,  the  questions 
of  race,  on  which  all  young  men  of  intelligence 
of  our  times  think  a  great  deal  and  talk  a  great 
deal.  Chinese  question,  African  question,  Cath- 
olic question, — they  all  hinge  on  questions  of 
race.  Who  studies  these  questions  of  race? 
Do  the  lawyers  study  them?  Not  they ;  they 
are  no  affair  of  theirs.  Do  the  medical  schools  ? 
Scarcely ;  the  pulse  of  a  Calmuck  and  the  pulse 
of  a  Hottentot  beat  in  much  the  same  way. 
The  theologians  do  study  them  ;  they  have  to 


136  WHAT    CAREER? 

study  them.  Dr.  Clarke's  book  on  "  The  Ten 
Great  Religions "  is  based  on  his  lectures  as 
a  professor  of  theology.  Dr.  Everett's  studies 
of  Confucius  are  studies  made  for  his  classes  in 
theology.  "  The  Ethnic  Religions,"  as  they  are 
called,  which  involve  the  full  study  of  the  rela- 
tions of  the  races  to  each  other,  are  studied  in 
the  theological  seminaries,  and  nowhere  besides. 
Then  there  are  the  social-science  questions, 
as  people  call  them,  for  want  of  a  better  name. 
These  occupy  largely  the  attention  of  young 
men:  questions  of  the  relations  of  classes  to 
each  other,  of  labor  to  capital,  of  poverty  to 
wealth,  of  emigrants  to  native  citizens,  of  pris- 
ons, of  punishment,  of  the  "  social  evil,"  of  the 
relief  of  pauperism,  and  other  questions  of  this 
class.  All  men  of  sense  are  interested  in  these 
questions,  —  nay,  all  men  of  sense  have  to  deal 
with  them  in  life.  Now,  with  regard  to  these 
questions,  as  with  regard  to  the  questions  of  the 
theory  of  creation,  the  books  of  reference  alone 
are  not  to  be  found  outside  a  well-furnished 
public  library,  collected  with  a  view  to  the 
study.  No  law  library  contains  such  books, 


WHAT    CAREER?  137 

though  in  a  broad  sense  it  ought  to.  Social  sci- 
ence is  a  specialty  which  thus  far  in  this  coun- 
try has  not  made  large  collections.  The  young 
man  interested  in  the  discussions  it  involves 
will  have  to  go  to  a  well-furnished  theological 
or  university  library  to  get  his  materials.  And 
a  theological  seminary  of  the  first  class  is  the 
only  place  where  he  will  find  many  persons  in- 
terested in  the  same  inquiries.  He  will  find 
them  there.  He  will  find  one  or  more  professors 
personally  well-informed  in  the  details  of  the 
subject.  He  will  find  fellow-students  who  make 
it  their  special  study ;  who  propose  to  them- 
selves the  struggle  with  the  blunders  and  evils 
of  society  as  their  work  in  life.  Much  of  the 
student  life  and  vital  interest  of  a  theological 
school  is  given  to  the  methods  and  direction  of 
such  a  struggle. 

Now,  I  do  not  pretend  that  a  young  man 
entering  on  a  course  of  theology  at  most  theo- 
logical seminaries  would  be  permitted  to  choose 
simply  such  philosophical  or  practical  studies  as 
these,  —  which  happen  to  attract  young  men,  — 
and  to  pass  by  other  studies  in  the  curriculum. 


138  WHAT    CAREER? 

What  I  wish  to  show  is,  that,  in  the  curriculum 
of  a  well-furnished  seminary,  the  yery  topics  of 
philosophy  most  interesting  to  the  public  mind 
now  occupy  a  very  large  place,  though  they  be 
shielded  and  concealed  from  the  public  eye 
under  such  old-fashioned  and  academic  phrases 
as  "systematic  theology,"  and  "philosophy  of 
religion."  I  will  attempt  now  to  unravel  some 
of  the  other  phrases,  which,  in  the  programmes 
of  the  schools,  cover  over  a  set  of  interests 
which  all  young  men  of  intelligence  share. 

"  Ecclesiastical  history "  is  a  great  bugbear. 
"  They  have  to  spend  so  much  time  in  ecclesias- 
tical history."  Popularly,  in  the  average  stu- 
dent mind,  it  is  supposed  that  this  is  the  study 
of  lists  of  popes,  of  the  dates  in  which  Scotch 
synods  sat,  and  of  the  order  of  the  apostolic 
succession  of  Bishop  Colenso  and  of  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Knickerbacker.  The  truth  is  that  ecclesi- 
astical history  is  the  history  of  the  world,  studied 
on  the  side  of  ideas  rather  than  on  the  side  of 
forms  or  statistics.  History  studied  as  Gibbon 
or  Milman  or  Buckle  or  Lecky  or  Carlyle  or 
Michelet  study  it,  is  ecclesiastical  history.  His- 


WHAT    CAREER?  139 

tory  studied  in  its  outside  or  pictorial  form,  as 
Livy  studies  it,  or  Suetonius,  or  Richard  of 
Devizes,  or  Hume  or  Prescott,  is  only  an  aux- 
iliary to  ecclesiastical  history.  Now,  we  need 
only  refer  to  the  real  and  lasting  popularity  of 
such  books  as  Stanley's  "  Lectures  on  Church 
History,"  to  show  that  the  philosophical  or  ideal 
method,  the  only  true  and  comprehensive 
method,  is  at  the  same  time  the  method  which 
really  interests  intelligent  people.  And  here 
again,  as  before,  I  have  a  right  to  say  that  phil- 
osophical history  is  scarcely  studied  anywhere 
else  in  this  country  but  in  the  better  arranged 
theological  seminary.  The  School  of  History, 
in  Cornell,  and  the  classes  at  Charlottesville, 
Va.,  are  the  only  striking  exceptions  which  I 
remember.  So  far  from  its  being  a  study  en- 
cumbered with  detail  of  the  methods  of  admin- 
istration of  the  so-called  "  Church  "  of  its  time, 
it  is  very  indifferent  to  such  chaff,  which  gets 
itself  forgotten  very  speedily.  Dealing  with 
such  subjects  as  the  Puritan  Revolution  in  Eng- 
land, the  Reformation  in  all  its  forms,  the  civil- 
ization of  the  north  of  Europe,  the  abolition  of 


140  WHAT    CAREER? 

slavery  in  the  Roman  Empire,  the  establishment 
of  the  civil  law,  the  diffusion  of  letters  over  the 
world,  —  to  name  only  three  or  four  essential 
points  of  consideration,  — it  is  wholly  impossible 
that  "  ecclesiastical  history  "  should  be  either  a 
dry  or  an  unpractical  study. 

"Homiletics  "  again.  "Who,  in  his  senses," 
says  the  average  senior,  "would  study  homi- 
letics  ?  "  Well,  I  confess  I  am  tempted  to  ask 
what  dean  of  a  theological  school  in  his  senses 
would  put  an  old-fashioned  word  like  "  homi- 
letics  "  into  his  programme  of  study ;  or  rather 
a  word  like  this,  which  was  never  in  fashion. 
Homiletics  is  the  science  of  address :  the  sci- 
ence, so  far  as  it  can  be  put  in  science,  by  which 
such  men  as  Beecher  and  Wendell  Phillips  and 
Charles  Finney  and  Newman  Hall  and  Frederic 
Robertson  and  Charles  Spurgeon  affect  in  speech 
their  fellow-men,  when  they  want  to  affect  them. 
Is  it,  or  is  it  not,  worth  while  to  learn  any  thing 
about  that?  Is  that,  or  is  it  not,  an  interesting 
study?  To  the  average  American  student, 
whose  duty  and  destiny  it  is  to  move  throngs  of 
men  by  the  way  in  which  he  shall  state  to  them 


WHAT    CAREER?  141 

the  truth,  is  it,  or  is  it  not,  an  important  study  ? 
But  people  say,  "  Homiletics  sound  like  '  homily,' 
and  homilies  are  supposed  to  be  dull !  "  No 
matter  what  it  sounds  like :  it  is  the  science  of 
address.  I  never  understood  that  anybody  who 
sat  under  the  preaching  of  Ward  Beecher  or 
Robert  Colly er,  the  chiefs  of  homiletics  just 
now,  found  their  preaching  dull.  Precisely  be- 
cause they  knew  something  of  homiletics,  was 
their  preaching  vital  and  entertaining. 

I  have  before  me  the  programme  of  the  work 
of  the  Theological  Seminary  at  Cambridge, 
where  the  "  homiletics  "  are  under  the  charge  of 
Prof.  Everett,  a  gentleman  who  is  one  of  the 
few  poets  who  are  at  the  same  time  writing 
metaphysicians.  He  is  the  man  who  has  written 
the  one  thorough  statement  of  "  The  Science  of 
Thought"  which  has  appeared  in  the  English 
language,  so  careful  and  accurate  is  his  process 
of  reasoning.  On  the  other  hand,  he  is  a  born 
poet,  and  sees  the  natural  illustration  of  every 
spiritual  truth  on  the  instant  that  the  truth 
asserts  itself.  That  man,  by  good  fortune,  is 
placed  in  the  position  of  teaching  young  men 


142  WHAT    CAREER? 

how  to  address  audiences.  Does  any  one  who 
ever  heard  him,  suppose  that  his  presentation  of 
that  subject  will  be  antiquated  or  dull  ? 

And  jet  again  I  am  tempted  to  ask,  What 
place  is  there,  after  a  man  has  left  college,  where 
he  will  be  taught  any  thing  of  this  essential 
business  of  addressing  other  men,  except  in  a 
theological  seminary?  Certainly  not  in  a  law 
school,  unless  by  good  luck  there  is  a  spirited 
debating  club  among  the  students.  Certainly 
not  in  a  medical  school.  The  doctors  suffer  till 
the  day  they  die,  from  their  inability  to  tell 
other  men  in  public  speech  what  they  want  to 
say  to  them.  The  chairs  of  the  better  theologi- 
cal seminaries  alone  supply  this  necessity ;  and 
they  veil  it  under  the  unintelligible  and  disre- 
garded title  of  the  "  homiletics." 

There  remain,  of  the  studies  of  a  well-appointed 
theological  school,  the  criticism  of  the  Bible  and 
the  science  of  ethics.  These  are  unquestion- 
ably those  at  which  the  average  senior,  whom 
we  have  tried  to  describe,  looks  most  suspiciously. 
Like  a  horse  free  in  the  pasture,  he  sniffs  at  the 
salt  in  the  proffered  measure,  but  determines,  on 


WHAT    CAREER?  143 

the  whole,  that  he  prefers  freedom  without  salt, 
to  salt  with  a  halter.  He  throws  up  his  heels 
in  the  luxury  of  life  without  a  tether,  and  gal- 
lops to  the  farther  part  of  the  enclosure ;  and 
his  freedom  ends  in  such  liberty  as  he  may 
find  in  a  lawyer's  office,  or  within  sound  of  a 
doctor's  bell,  or  as  a  principal  of  an  academy ! 

What,  then,  is  the  critical  study  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  New  ?  It  is  the  scientific, 
philosophical,  manly  study  of  a  series  of  books 
which,  as  any  Christian  man  believes,  nay, 
knows,  are  of  the  very  first  importance  to  the 
world.  And  does  any  Christian  man  really  say 
that  he  means  to  get  along  with  any  thing  less 
than  the  scientific,  philosophical,  manly  study  of 
these  books?  Does  he  really  mean  to  take  his 
opinion  of  them  at  second  hand,  —  and  at  sec- 
ond hand,  perhaps,  from  very  questionable  or 
very  ill-educated  teachers?  If  a  man  really 
means  that  he  knows  more  and  better  than  is 
taught  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  or  that  he 
can  come  nearer  God  than  the  Saviour  brings 
him  in  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  John,  that  is 
one  tiling.  That  man  may,  with  a  certain  con- 


144  WHAT    CAREER? 

sistency,  excuse  himself  from  careful  and  ade- 
quate study  of  the  Bible ;  but  even  in  that  con- 
sistency there  is  a  lamentable  confession :  "I 
know  very  little  of  the  Bible ;  therefore  I  do 
not  want  to  know  any  more."  But,  not  to 
inquire  into  the  duty  or  the  choice  of  that 
man,  — for  other  men,  for  men  who  have  found 
Jesus  Christ  to  be  their  living  help,  and  the 
Holy  Spirit  the  true  leader  of  life,  —  is  it  a 
natural  or  a  consistent  thing  for  them  to  say 
that  they  are  satisfied  with  a  Sunday-school 
knowledge  of  our  indifferent  version  of  the 
Bible,  and  that  they  will  not  attempt  to  extend 
that  knowledge  by  a  systematic  or  critical  study 
of  it  in  the  original?  To  say  the  very  least, 
have  such  men  a  right  to  pronounce,  a  priori, 
that  such  study  must  be  functional,  formal, 
and  dull? 

To  speak  very  briefly  of  the  last  fifty  years 
alone.  The  opening  of  the  Egyptian  hierogly- 
phics has  made  a  new  thing  of  the  five  books  as- 
cribed to  Moses  ;  the  opening  up  of  the  Assyrian 
and  other  Eastern  inscriptions,  and  the  daily  re- 
ports of  researches  and  travels  in  the  East,  have 


WHAT    CAREER?  145 

made  a  new  thing  of  the  study  of  the  historical 
books  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  emancipation 
of  Christianity  from  the  dogmas  of  the  darkest 
ages  has  reopened  the  whole  subject  of  the  per- 
son, nature,  and  character  of  Christ.  Seeley's 
"Ecce  Homo,"  Kenan's  "Jesus,"  Furness's 
book  with  the  same  title,  Parker's  "Ecce  Deus," 
Derenbourg's  "History  of  Palestine,"  "Geikie's 
Christ,"  and  a  hundred  other  recent  books,  show 
that  this  is  so.  For  the  study  of  the  relations 
of  Christianity  to  the  history,  social  order,  and 
philosophy  of  the  Roman  Empire,  which  is  the 
subject  of  the  critical  study  of  the  Epistles, 
such  books  in  popular  circulation  as  Merivale's, 
Dezobry's,  and  Lecky's  "History  of  Morals," 
are  enough  to  show  that  that  study  is  to-day 
a  study  as  fresh  and  as  important  as  it  ever 
was. 

Lastly,  with  regard  to  ethics  or  morals,  no 
intelligent  or  high-minded  young  gentleman  will 
enter  into  any  discussion  with  me.  It  will  be 
acknowledged,  on  all  hands,  to  be  the  most  vital 
and  suggestive  subject  of  our  familiar  thought 
and  conversation. 

7 


146  WHAT    CAREER? 

Thus  much  reason  have  I  for  saying  that  a 
theological  seminary,  so  far  from  confining  itself 
to  obsolete  subjects  of  study,  addresses  itself  to 
the  most  important  and  vital  subjects  of  the 
day,  if  it  is  true  to  its  position ;  nay,  must  do 
so,  from  the  very  law  of  its  being.  And  thus 
much  reason  have  I  for  saying  that  such  a 
school,  instead  of  pursuing  certain  antiquated 
methods,  such  as  would  be  called  functional,  is 
in  fact  at  this  moment  the  only  school  we  have 
of  philosophy  proper,  speaking  in  distinction 
from  that  study  of  smoke  and  dust  which  is 
now  called  natural  philosophy  or  science,  to 
which  we  owe  the  present  enthusiasm  for  what 
are  called  scientific  schools. 

Now,  in  reply  to  this  statement,  I  expect  to  be 
told  that  the  theological  schools  of  the  country 
are  not  true  to  their  position.  I  shall  be  told 
at  this  point  that  what  I  have  said  is  an  ac- 
count of  what  they  ought  to  be,  but  that  in  fact 
they  are  something  very  different;  that  their 
professors  do  not  dare  enter  freely  into  the  pop- 
ular questions  of  the  day;  and  the  students  do 


WHAT    CAREER?  147 

not  dare  take  them  up  without  the  countenance 
of  the  professors. 

It  is  here,  therefore,  that  I  have  to  say  that 
all  that  I  have  written  I  have  written  with 
the  constant  use  of  the  programme  of  one  of 
the  oldest  and  best  seminaries  in  this  country, — 
that  at  Cambridge.  I  have  no  reason  to  doubt 
that  many  other  schools  can  say  what  I  say  dis- 
tinctly of  this,  from  its  printed  reports  and  from 
official  opportunities  of  visit  and  information. 
This  school  is  under  the  nominal  government  of 
the  Corporation  of  Harvard  College;  in  fact, 
its  arrangements  are  made  by  its  own  Faculty, 
who  are, — 

Dr.  Oliver  Stearns,  as  well  known  West  as 
East. 

Dr.  Frederic  H.  Hedge,  the  author  of  "He- 
brew Tradition,"  "  Reason  in  Religion,"  "  The 
Collection  of  German  Prose  Writers,"  and  so 
many  other  books. 

Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  author  among 
other  books,  of  "The  Ten  Great  Religions  of 
the  World,"  "The  Steps  of  Belief,"  "The 
Truths  and  Errors  of  Orthodoxy." 


148  WHAT    CAREER? 

Dr.  Charles  Carroll  Everett,  author  of  "  The 
Science  of  Thought,"  to  which  I  have  alluded. 

Prof.  Edward  James  Young,  one  of  our  most 
successful  students  in  Germany  as  in  America. 

Besides  these,  Prof.  Sophocles,  the  author  of 
"  The  Byzantine  Dictionary  ;  "  Prof.  Abbot,  the 
American  editor  of  Smith's  "  Bible  Dictionary;" 
and  several  Boston  clergymen, — lecture  in  the 
school. 

Now,  will  anybody  pretend  to  say  that  gen- 
tlemen who  have  in  print  and  before  the  world 
used  the  free,  broad,  and  scientific  system  which 
all  of  these  gentlemen  have  illustrated,  will,  in 
their  relations  with  a  few  students,  be  narrow, 
functional,  bigoted,  or  petty?  Can  such  words 
in  any  fashion  be  applied  to  such  men?  Can 
any  reason  be  conceived  why  they  should  not 
do  their  best  to  make  the  study  they  have  in 
hand  broad,  natural,  suggestive,  and  even  with 
the  times?  I  am  convinced  that  if  any  young 
man  who  believes  in  study  which  is  study,  will 
inquire  of  any  student  like  himself  in  that,  who 
is  now  in  the  Cambridge  Divinity  school,  he  will 
be  told  that  the  studies  there  pursued  are  in  fact 


WHAT    CAREER?  149 

pursued  in  the  broadest,  most  generous,  and  phil- 
osophical spirit.  Nor  have  I  any  reason  to  say 
that  the  same  may  not  be  asserted  of  the  other 
leading  theological  seminaries  in  the  country. 

There  remains  to  be  examined  the  familiar 
statement  which  we  placed  first,  that,  on  enter- 
ing a  theological  seminary,  a  young  man  pledges 
himself  in  advance  to  certain  opinions  of  which 
he  is  yet  to  examine  the  foundations. 

This  charge,  however  true  it  may  have  been 
of  other  eras  of  the  Church,  is  not  in  any  sense 
true  of  the  Divinity  School  at  Cambridge  ;  and 
I  suppoes  it  to  be  equally  untrue  of  other  leading 
theological  seminaries.  Of  course,  if  a  man  is 
not  a  Christian,  he  will  not  wish  to  enter  on  a 
course  of  studies  which  are  arranged  to  train 
him  to  be  an  effective  Christian  minister.  The 
presumption  is,  undoubtedly,  that  men  who  study 
theology  in  Christian  theological  seminaries  will 
try  their  abilities  in  the  Christian  ministry. 
But  even  to  this  they  are  not  pledged  at  Cam- 
bridge. I  doubt  if  they  are  so  pledged  at  any  in- 
stitution of  the  first  rank.  Undoubtedly,  before 
a  young  man  accepts  the  flattering  help  of  what 


150  WHAT    CAREER? 

are  called  "  beneficiary  funds,"  he  should  inquire 
very  carefully  what  are  the  relations  in  which 
the'  acceptance  of  such  funds  involve  him. 
They  belong  to  a  system  wholly  un-American, 
and  which  has  no  parallel  in  any  thing  else  in 
our  social  order.  But  I  can  conceive  of  cases 
where  the  use  of  such  funds  shall  imply  no 
pledge  as  to  the  after-course  of  the  man  who 
uses  them.  And,  however  that  may  be,  the  en- 
trance into  a  first-class  theological  seminary  in 
itself,  and  the  use  of  its  advantages,  involve  no 
compromise  of  opinion  whatever.  At  Cam- 
bridge, any  man  who  can  pass  the  simple  liter- 
ary examination,  and  is  of  good  moral  character, 
may  enter.  Any  man  who  passes  the  regular 
term-examinations,  and  retains  his  moral  char- 
acter, may  graduate,  whatever  his  theological 
opinions.  If  he  have  been  well  prepared  for 
entrance,  and  have  used  his  three  years  to  ad- 
vantage, he  may  take  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of 
Divinity ;  and  this  degree  is  open  to  him,  what- 
ever his  theological  convictions.  Chunder  Sen 
could  take  it,  or  Pio  Nono,  if  they  could  pass, 
as  I  suppose  they  both  could,  the  examinations! 


WHAT    CAREER?  151 

There  remains  the  question,  whether  the  pro- 
fession of  the  Christian  ministry  is  worth  the 
three  years'  preparation,  supposing  that  a  man 
find  in  the  course  of  that  time  that  he  can  fit 
himself  for  it  respectably.  Thus  far  I  have  in- 
tentionally avoided  this  question.  I  have  re- 
garded the  theological  seminary  as  what  it  is, — 
the  one  professional  school  which  enlarges  and 
continues  the  range  of  philosophical  and  specu- 
lative studies  in  which,  at  college,  a  young  man 
begins.  Neither  of  the  other  schools  professes 
to  do  this.  They  profess  to  select  a  single  walk 
of  life, — law,  medicine,  physics,  or  engineer- 
ing, and  to  prepare  for  that ;  but  a  theological 
school  is  different.  Because  God  rules  every 
thing,  all  law  in  whatever  line,  moral,  physical, 
or  historical,  may  be  studied  there ;  and  where 
the  school  is  rightly  organized,  it  is  studied 
there.  A  theological  seminary,  therefore,  takes 
up  and  enlarges  the  line  of  study  in  the  college. 

Now,  I  will  frankly  meet  the  question  regard- 
ing the  interest  or  value  of  the  ministry  itself 
to  a  man  choosing  his  profession  in  our  time. 
The  popular  idea  of  the  life  of  a  clergyman  is 


152  WHAT    CAREER? 

that  lie  spends  his  mornings  in  writing  sermons 
and  translating  Hebrew,  and  his  afternoons  in 
visiting  sick  people  and  burying  the  dead.  The 
supposition  is  that  he  does  all  this  in  a  certain 
pre-ordained  or  conventional  way,  which  leaves 
very  little  play  for  imagination,  fancy,  personal- 
character,  or  indeed  for  the  intellect  in  any  of 
its  enterprises.  As  this  is  the  popular  idea,  it 
probably  enters  largely  into  the  discussions  of 
such  a  club  of  seniors  as  I  have  imagined 
looking  forward  upon  their  profession.  Now  I 
confess  that  if  young  men,  with  the  enthusiasm, 
vitality,  and  ambition  of  young  men,  liked  any 
such  life  as  that,  or  could  be  largely  bought  into 
it  by  the  bribes  of  any  education  societies,  I 
should  think  very  sadly  of  our  times.  I  believe 
it  is  because  young  men  believe  in  action,  ad- 
vance, and  in  the  improvement  of  society,  that 
in  general  they  reject  the  proposals  made  to 
them  to  enter  such  a  profession,  about  which, 
for  one  or  another  reason,  there  hangs  such  a 
reputation.  And  I  believe  that  the  bounties 
paid  by  the  education  societies  have  clouded  the 
matter  more,  and  made  it  worse  than  before. 


WHAT    CAREER?  153 

In  point  of  fact,  and  as  I  observe  society,  this 
description  of  the  life  of  an  American  clergy- 
man is  ridiculously  untrue.  Perhaps  it  would 
be  better  if  a  few  more  of  them  did  study  their 
Hebrew  in  the  morning.  Certainly  the  number 
that  do  may  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  a  man's 
hands.  It  would  not  be  fair,  perhaps,  to  ask  as 
to  the  private  life  of  Bishop  Simpson,  Phillips 
Brooks,  Bishop  Huntington,  or  Dr.  Bellows ; 
but  I  am  disposed  to  believe  that  there  are 
few  more  active  men  in  the  community.  As 
for  general  influence  on  the  public,  I  must  say 
that  the  one  thing  certain  at  school  meetings, 
college  meetings,  Indian  meetings,  meetings  to 
welcome  and  meetings  to  say  farewell,  natural- 
history  meetings,  public-library  meetings,  or 
meetings  of  whatever  sort  which  have  our  en- 
larging civilization  in  hand,  —  is  that  the  men 
you  will  meet  are  clergymen.  Nor  is  the  do- 
main of  literature  to  be  forgotten.  It  is  not 
by  accident  that,  among  the  few  first-class 
names  in  our  literary  history,  the  names  of  such 
leaders  as  Channing,  Everett,  Sparks,  Bancroft, 
Emerson,  and  Ripley  should  be  the  names  of 
7* 


154  WHAT    CAREER? 

clergymen.  There  is  but  one  profession  which 
of  necessity  trains  men  to  express  themselves 
simply,  distinctly,  and  from  conviction ;  and  that 
profession  was  theirs.  And  if  any  man  asks  the 
question  of  general  influence  on  men,  I  should 
be  glad  to  be  told  what  man  at  the  bar,  in  medi- 
cine, or  in  any  walk  of  physical  science  to-day, 
meets  so  many  men  directly  or  indirectly  in 
America,  whom  he  may  attempt  to  move  by 
personal  appeal  in  print,  or  by  the  influence  of 
those  on  whom  he  acts,  as  do  the  great  preach- 
ers or  ministers,  —  such  men  as  Dr.  Bacon, 
Bishop  Simpson,  Dr.  Bellows,  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  or  Edwin  Hubbell  Chapin? 

The  theological  seminary  which  shall  first  de- 
vise a  method  of  showing  to  its  students,  in 
their  vacations  from  the  study  of  books  and  of 
ideas,  the  romantic  and  exciting  detail  of  the 
life  of  a  working  minister ;  the  seminary  which 
will  give  them  what  the  best  medical  schools  do 
in  giving  a  clinigue  to  their  students,  —  will,  as 
I  believe,  become  the  most  popular  of  profes- 
sional schools,  if  only  its  conductors  remember 
that,  for  the  study  of  truth,  the  first  requisite  is 
freedom. 


WHAT    CAREER?  155 

VI. 
CHARACTER. 

study  is  more  impressive  than  the  study 
of  monuments  ;  or  of  dictionaries  of  biog- 
raphy, which  in  their  way  are  monuments.  As 
you  ride  into  Palmyra,  you  pass  for  miles  on 
the  right  and  left  the  bases  of  lost  statues.  On 
these  bases  are  carved  the  names  of  the  men 
who  were  represented  there.  But  the  names 
do  not  preserve  the  memory  of  those  men,  more 
than  the  broken  statues.  The  men  were  to 
be  forgotten,  and  they  are  forgotten. 

On  the  other  hand  Zenobia,  Queen  of  Pal- 
myra, has  a  name  that  lives.  Longinus,  one  of 
her  ministers,  has  a  name  that  lives.  There  are 
no  statues  of  Zenobia  in  Palmyra,  —  none  of 
Longinus.  But,  with  or  without  statues,  they 
live,  because  there  was  something  in  them  of 
the  living  sort.  They  were  made  to  live. 

These  miles  of  statues  were  reared  to  the 
Captains  of  Caravans  who  had  taken  Roman 


156  WHAT    CAREER? 

gentlemen  safely  and  comfortably  across  the 
desert.  We  all  know  how  much  attached  we 
become  to  a  captain  of  a  steamship,  who  has 
brought  us  over  well.  In  the  old  days  of  sailing 
vessels  and  long  passages  to  and  from  Europe, 
a  frequent  custom  and  a  grateful  one,  indeed, 
was  for  the  passengers  to  subscribe  for  a  piece 
of  silver  plate  for  the  captain  who  had  served 
them.  It  seems  that  in  those  older  days  of 
Palmyra  there  was  a  similar  habit.  I  suppose 
that,  when  the  last  day  of  the  tedious  caravan 
journey  came,  some  active,  busy  traveller,  who 
had  no  family  to  attend  to,  bustled  round  with 
a  subscription  paper,  and  made  up  a  purse  for  a 
statue  of  the  commander.  Then  a  good  artist 
was  found  in  Palmyra,  and  one  more  statue  was 
added  to  the  long  line  of  fame. 

There  is  a  like  story  of  the  decline  of  Athens. 
Athens  ordered  that  three  hundred  and  sixty 
statues  should  be  erected  to  Demetrius  Phale- 
reus,  one  of  the  popular  rulers  of  that  time. 
But  three  hundred  and  sixty  statues  have  not 
saved  his  name  from  forgetfulness.  In  contrast 
with  that,  as  Nepos  says,  Miltiades,  who  saved 


WHAT    CAREER?  157 

Athens  from  the  Turk  of  his  day,  will  always  be 
remembered,  —  though  the  monument  to  him 
was  only  a  poor  water-color,  which  soon  faded, 
on  a  temple-wall. 

These  stories  are  good  enough  illustrations  of 
the  eternal  law,  —  that  character  is  the  only 
permanent  reality  in  human  life  ;  and  that  we 
cannot  substitute  brass  or  marble,  not  granite 
nor  gold  as  a  substitute.  It  may  happen  that  a 
monument,  like  Cleopatra's  needle,  takes  a  name 
which  the  steadfast  memory  of  men  gives  to  it, 
in  the  place  of  the  forgotten  inscription  once 
carved  on  its  corner-stone.  By  the  same  law, 
they  tell  you  at  Kenilworth  that  Cromwell  de- 
stroyed Lord  Leicester's  Castle.  All  the  per- 
sonal actors  in  its  destruction  are  forgotten  ;  but 
Cromwell  is  of  the  type  of  men  who  live. 

Literary  men  are  for  ever  trying  to  rake  out 
of  the  ashes  of  the  past  some  old  bit  of  badly 
melted  slag,  and  telling  us  that  it  is  good  coal, 
or  perhaps  diamond,  and  that  it  should  not  be 
forgotten.  Every  now  and  then  somebody  tries 
to  write  up  Abelard  in  this  way.  A  few  years 
ago,  an  accomplished  scholar  here  tried  to  gal- 


158  WHAT    CAREER? 

vanize  Charles  the  Bold,  and  make  him  live. 
But  the  poor  corpses  will  not  stand  up  long 
enough  for  men  to  apply  the  batteries  which 
should  make  them  twitch  and  start.  There  is 
nothing  to  live. 

It  is  of  no  great  consequence  whether  men 
are  remembered  or  forgotten.  But  this  persist- 
ency of  character,  in  its  hold  on  the  memory  of 
men,  —  if  they  have  once  found  out  that  there  is 
a  character  to  remember,  —  is  a  good  illustration 
of  the  absolute  or  eternal  force  of  character, 
and  the  steady  and  certain  victory  which  it  com- 
mands. At  the  moment  men  never  understand 
it.  The  town  cannot  understand  why  Charles, 
whom  it  thinks  dull,  moves  steadily  forward, 
while  George,  whom  it  thought  brilliant,  is  more 
and  more  certainly  set  on  one  side.  But  the 
reason  is  that  George  is  only  brilliant,  while 
Charles  had  the  weight  and  force  of  character. 
In  my  early  life,  I  was  so  placed  at  one  time,  in 
the  discharge  of  my  daily  duty,  as  to  be  com- 
pletely dependent,  for  two  or  three  hours  per- 
haps of  each  day,  on  the  will  or  whim  of  two 
public  functionaries.  The  superior  in  rank  of 


WHAT    CAREER?  159 

these  two  was  a  man  of  unswerving  truth  and 
honor,  who  was  however  lonely,  low-toned,  low- 
spirited,  probably  selfish,  certainly  unsympathiz- 
ing.  The  result  or  combination  of  these  qual- 
ities made  him  what  we  familiarly  call  "  cross  " 
to  everybody  who  came  in  his  way.  Many  a 
day  have  I  lost  my  dinner,  and  sunk  hours  of 
useless  life,  because  this  man  would  not  pass  a 
sheet  of  paper  across  his  desk  for  me  to  copy, 
until  his  own  work  was  fully  done,  and  his  own 
later  dinner-hour  come.  The  younger  of  these 
two  men,  his  inferior  in  rank,  was  also  a  man 
of  unswerving  truth  and  honor,  of  whom  then  I 
knew  little  but  that  he  was  quick,  sympathetic, 
unselfish,  and  kind.  He  did  his  own  work  well, 
was  glad  to  see  others  do  theirs  well ;  had  ex- 
actly the  same  kind  of  work  to  do  that  the 
other  had,  but  always  helped  us  boys  along  ; 
taught  us  if  we  needed  teaching,  was  willing 
to  help  us  if  the  State  took  no  peril,  and  won, 
of  course,  our  enthusiastic  love. 

This  man  rapidly  rose  up  the  steps  of  our 
social  system,  received,  one  after  another,  the 
highest  honors  which  this  State  has  to  give  to 


160  WHAT    CAREER? 

a  man  in  his  profession,  and  died,  only  too 
young  for  us,  having  attained  a  name  which 
will  long  be  remembered  in  the  walk  of  life  to 
which  his  life  was  given.  The  other,  at  the 
first  overturn  in  politics,  lost  his  place ;  so  did 
his  junior.  But  my  cross  friend  never  regained 
his,  nor  indeed  any  position  of  trust.  Not  he. 
"  I  care  for  nobody,  no,  not  I ;  and  nobody 
cares  for  me."  That  is  the  law  of  such  men. 
I  used  to  meet  him  in  the  street,  every  year  or 
two,  as  I  grew  older  and  older.  He  looked 
every  time  rather  more  sour  and  rather  more 
hard  than  the  time  before.  I  am  perfectly  sure 
that  all  this  time  he  was  satisfying  himself  that 
the  world  was  an  unjust  world  and  a  very  hard 
world.  I  do  not  know,  but  I  think,  that  the 
wolf  came  nearer  to  his  door  and  nearer  with 
every  year.  And  when,  after  twenty  or  more 
years,  I  read  the  record  of  his  death  also  in  the 
newspaper,  I  felt  sadly  sure  that  the  grave  had 
closed  over  a  man  who  was  only  too  willing  to  go  ; 
and  who  died,  saying  that  the  world  had  not 
treated  him  fairly. 

Well,  I  do  not  say  that  the  world  is  a  just 


WHAT    CAREER?  161 

world,  nor  that  time  can  be  always  relied  upon 
for  a  verdict.  It  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
which  is  the  kingdom  of  justice ;  and  only 
eternity  can  be  relied  upon  for  the  truth.  But 
I  do  say  that  I  believe  that  in  this  case  of  those 
two  men  the  verdict  was  substantially  a  just 
verdict ;  and  that  one  of  them  was  rewarded 
and  the  other  punished  because  of  differences 
of  character,  which  were  wholly  within  their 
own  control.  Yet  it  may  be  that  neither  of 
those  men  was  aware  of  the  character  which  he 
himself  bore. 

For  character  is  very  different  from  reputa- 
tion, though  we  mix  the  names  so  oft6n.  The 
English  servant  who  wants  a  place,  advertises 
that  he  has  a  three  years'  character:  meaning 
that  he  has  three  years'  reputation  since  any- 
body has  known  him  who  is  willing  to  testify 
for  him,  or  since  he  lost  his  good  reputation  in 
some  tavern  or  some  brawl.  But  though  he 
talks  of  a  three-years'  "character,"  his  real 
character  has  been  forming  since  he  drew  his 
first  breath.  The  great  trip-hammer  of  the 
mint  of  God  hits  us  hard,  and  hits  us  again 


162  WHAT    CAREER? 

and  hits  us  again ;  and,  with  every  blow,  the 
metal  struck  changes  its  lustre,  changes  its 
strength,  even,  changes  the  image  and  the 
superscription.  The  word  character  is  true  still 
to  its  derivation.  It  is  a  Greek  word,  wholly 
unchanged,  which  the  Greeks  derived  from  the 
word  which  we  pronounce  harass,  which  they 
pronounced  char  ass  (xapdaaai),  but  which  had 
the  meaning  then  that  it  has  now.  They  spoke 
then  of  a  coin  in  the  mint,  which  was  hammered 
and  tortured  by  the  sharp  edges  of  the  die,  as 
being  stamped  upon  indeed,  as  a  poor  charassed 
thing,  —  as  bearing  a  character.  Its  character 
came  to  it  because  it  was  beaten,  pounded  by 
this  tremendous  hammer.  The  more  it  was 
beaten,  the  more  distinct  character  it  had.  I 
believe  all  our  words  of  similar  import  have  a 
similar  derivation.  Thus,  when  we  say  a  man 
is  of  this  "  type  "  of  manhood,  or  that  "  type  " 
of  manhood,  the  original  meaning  is  that  he  has 
been  beaten  into  that  shape  by  the  blows  of  life 
which  have  passed  over  him.  And  it  is  true 
that  a  man's  character  begins  when  he  is  born, 
and  changes  or  does  not  change  accordingly  as 


WHAT    CAREER?  163 

he  bears  the  pounding  which  life  gives  him. 
Burns  says  "  The  rank  is  but  the  guinea's 
stamp."  This  means,  at  bottom,  that  a  "  pound  " 
is  metal  which  has  been  pounded.  And  there 
are  metals  which  improve  in  quality  all  the 
time  you  stamp  and  hammer  them.  Just  the 
same  is  true  of  man,  if  he  have  the  true 
heat,  the  true  life,  and  make  himself  master  of 
the  circumstance  instead  of  slave.  Precisely, 
now,  as  you  may  have  seen  different  strands  of 
iron  wire  brought  together  in  a  bloom,  heated 
red,  and  struck  and  struck  under  a  trip-hammer 
till  they  are  made  one,  so  all  the  different  ex- 
periences of  life, — the  lessons,  for  instance, 
which  these  papers  are  trying  to  set  in  order, 
—  are  fused  and  welded  into  one  in  the  process 
of  the  formation  of  character.  A  man's  habits 
of  sleep,  of  exercise,  and  of  appetite  ;  his  meth- 
ods of  reasoning,  imagination,  and  memory; 
his  faith,  his  hope,  his  love,  —  are  blended  to- 
gether in  his  character.  And  the  hammering 
becomes  no  unimportant  part  of  the  process. 

Certain  traits  of  character  there  are  which 
show  themselves    all    through    the    pounding. 


164  WHAT    CAREER? 

Thus,  all  the  hammering  of  eternity  will  not 
make  iron  into  gold.  But  a  very  little  hammer- 
ing will  make  pig-iron  into  wrought-iron,  if  you 
give  it  heat  enough ;  and,  so  hammered,  it  will 
bear  a  very  different  strain. 

I  remember  a  lovely  friend,  who  passed  into 
heaven  with  less  change  perhaps  than  any  other 
angel  I  ever  saw  pass  from  world  to  world.  I 
remember  she  told  me  of  a  surprise  of  hers 
which  exactly  illustrates  the  permanency  of 
some  traits  of  character.  But  that  life  illus- 
trates as  well  the  change  which  on  such  traits 
is  effected. 

When  she  was  twenty  years  old,  her  second 
mother  called  her  and  said :  "  You  will  like  to 
see  yourself  as  you  were  when  I  knew  you  first, 
a  girl  of  six."  So  her  mother  put  into  her 
hands  the  letter  which  contained  a  descriptive 
catalogue  of  her  faults  and  her  merits,  when,  at 
six  years  old,  the  aunts  who  had  trained  her 
transferred  her  to  this  mother's  care.  The 
young  woman  read  this  early  description  with 
amazement.  "  I  found  there,  in  black  and 
white,"  she  said,  "  traits  of  mine  which  I  knew 


WHAT    CAEEER?  165 

very  well,  but  which,  like  an  ostrich,  I  had  been 
carefully  concealing  all  my  life,  and  which  I 
supposed  no  one  had  ever  noted  except  myself." 
All  of  us,  perhaps,  have  had  like  experience, 
whether  of  inherited  traits  or  of  other  predispo- 
sitions, which,  showing  themselves  early,  crop 
out  all  along  the  course  of  life,  and  are  among 
the  constants  which  are  to  be  managed  by  a 
man's  own  will.  And,  as  this  same  friend  of 
mine  found  out,  all  the  interest  of  life,  and  all 
its  value,  is  in  the  managing  them  and  shaping 
them.  Character  is  the  combined  work  of  God 
and  man  in  the  minting.  I  may,  indeed,  keep 
to  the  same  illustration  of  the  Greeks,  of  the 
bar  of  iron.  It  is  smelted  and  beaten,  smelted 
and  beaten  again ;  heated  and  drawn,  heated 
and  drawn  again  ;  heated  and  cooled  suddenly, 
heated  and  cooled  slowly;  heated,  beaten,  and. 
cooled  in  every  conceivable  way,  —  till,  in  the 
shape  of  the  hair-spring  of  my  watch,  or  of  the 
needle  with  which  you  sew,  or  of  the  index  in 
the  mariner's  compass,  it  has  properties  and 
values  wholly  inconceivable  to  the  man  who 
only  knew  the  crude  lump  of  pig-iron.  Who 


166  WHAT    CAREER? 

has  been  the  actor  there  ?  The  intelligent  en- 
gineer, you  say,  who  built  the  furnace  and 
brought  to  it  the  charcoal  and  the  fluxes ;  who 
tamed  the  waterfall,  and  set  in  motion  the  gi- 
gantic wheels,  and  taught  these  trip-hammers 
to  move,  —  now  with  a  crashing  blow ;  now 
with  so  slight  a  movement  that  I  can  gently 
crack  an  egg-shell  with  it,  and  yet  it  shall  not 
lose  its  form.  Yes,  the  engineer  is  one  of  the 
actors.  He  is,  if  you  please,  the  principal  actor. 
But  he  is  not  the  only  actor.  He  needs,  and 
therefore  he  has  trained  and  has  placed  here, 
that  quiet,  brave,  modest,  swarthy  workman, 
whom  you  see  waiting  by  the  furnace  for  the 
hot  bloom  of  iron  to  be  white ;  who,  at  the  fit 
moment,  will  seize  it  and  slide  it  to  its  place 
under  the  trip-hammer ;  who  then  will  fix  it 
there,  that  it  shall  profit  by  the  blow  ;  who  will 
turn  it  from  side  to  side  that  it  shall  be  squarely 
shaped  ;  and  who,  when  fit  moment  comes,  shall 
cool  it  in  the  water  which  has  been  prepared. 
You  say  he  is  only  a  day-laborer.  That  is  true. 
You  say  he  is  ignorant,  unskilled  in  the  great 
powers  of  the  universe,  and  could  never  have 


WHAT    CAREER?  167 

set  in  order  this  giant  system  of  which  he  is  a 
part.  That  is  true.  But  he  is  a  part  of  it,  all 
the  same,  and  an  essential  part.  The  engineer 
placed  him  here  to  do  this  duty,  and  relied  on 
his  courage  and  conduct  and  fortitude,  and  on 
his  original  thought  and  discretion,  that  it  might 
be  done  well.  Nay,  the  engineer  trained  him, 
called  out  his  hidden  powers,  and  made  him 
partner  in  his  undertaking.  Yes;  and  the 
workman  has  implicit  faith  in  the  mill,  and  in 
him  that  runs  it,  —  risks  his  life  on  that  faith  ; 
and  because  he  trusts  to  the  waterfall,  to  the 
furnace,  and  to  the  directing  skill  that  sets  the 
whole  in  order,  he  is  what  he  is,  and  aids  in 
the  triumph  of  the  whole.  But  for  that  man, 
ignorant  and  weak  though  he  be,  the  bloom 
of  iron  would  never  become  tough  bar,  elas- 
tic sword-blade,  or  prophetic  needle.  Place  it 
under  the  trip-hammer  and  let  this  man  leave 
it  for  twenty  seconds,  and  then  see  how  little 
"character"  it  gains,  though  the  iron  mill  go 
steadily  forward  in  its  preordained  career. 

That  interaction  of  the  humble  workman  with 
the  directing  engineer  is  a  fit  enough  representa- 


168  WHAT    CAREER? 

tion  of  the  interaction  with  God  of  man  or 
woman,  who  are  his  little  children,  —  fellow- 
laborers  with  him  in  this  tempering  and  purifying 
and  stamping  which  makes  up  "  character."  God 
does  not  foreordain  it.  He  is  too  kind  for  that. 
We  cannot  create  it,  we  are  too  short-sighted  for 
that.  But  God  working  in  us,  and  we  working 
with  him  ;  in  summer  days  of  loveliness,  in  the 
night  struggles  of  winter  horror;  in  the  long 
brooding  of  wakeful  nights,  when  he  is  the 
only  companion ;  or  in  that  exquisite  intimacy 
with  her  the  dearest  or  with  him  the  strongest, 
which  is  the  choicest  gift  of  a  God  of  love,  — 
God  with  his  children  and  his  children  with 
him,  year  in,  year  out,  in  boyhood,  girlhood, 
manhood,  womanhood,  they  form  together  the 
character  which  seems  such  a  mystery. 

There  is  no  adequate  science  of  human  life, 
which  does  not  fitly  place  and  fitly  state  this 
interaction  of  the  two  free  agents  who  direct  it. 
The  life  of  a  man  differs  from  the  life  of  the 
palm  tree,  or  of  the  branching  coral,  precisely 
in  this  distinction,  —  that  the  man  may  or  may 
not  "  accept  the  universe."  He  is  free  to  work 


WHAT    CAREER?  169 

with  God  if  he  chooses,  or  to  oppose  him  if  he 
can.  According  as  he  works  with  him,  or  as  he 
works  against  him,  is  his  success  or  his  failure 
in  the  regular  formation  of  his  character. 

Hiram  Withington,  a  friend  of  my  youth, 
whom  we  lost  in  the  freshness  of  his  promise, 
said  the  regularity  or  the  irregularity  of  this  for- 
mation was  typified  in  the  stratification  of  the 
great  coal  regions  of  the  world.  He  said  that 
every  word  of  our  lips,  every  act  of  our  hands, 
every  step  of  our  feet,  every  thought  of  our 
brain,  every  emotion  of  our  heart,  and  every 
vision  of  our  fancy  might  be  looked  upon  as  so 
many  dancing  leaves  in  an  autumn  wind,  tossed 
hither,  tossed  thither,  rising  now,  floating  then, 
but  in  the  end  all  falling  to  the'  ground,  all 
soaked  together  in  a  cold,  clammy  mass,  by 
the  dews  and  rains  of  successive  night-falls  ;  all 
melted  together  at  last  in  the  heats  of  trial,  and 
crowded  together  under  the  pressure  of  adver- 
sity, and  cooled  together  in  winters  of  desola- 
tion, till  in  the  end  they  made  the  rock  which 
we  call  character.  We  speak  of  character  as  if 
it  were  solid  and  uniform,  but  in  truth  it  is  all 

8 


170  WHAT    CAREER? 

seamed  and  layered  by  these  traces  of  our  old 
life ;  and  one  has  only  to  tap  the  rock  here  or 
there,  or  where  he  will,  and  the  thin  strata  will 
lie  open  as  if  it  were  only  yesterday  that  they 
were  crowded  together  ;  and  yon  shall  find  the 
fibres  and  tissues,  nay,  you  shall  find  the  micro- 
scopic cell  and  the  fine  down  of  the  leaf,  as  if  it 
were  only  yesterday  that  it  had  fallen.  Each 
vision,  each  emotion,  each  thought,  each  step, 
each  act,  and  each  word  thus  combine  in  the 
necessary  processes  of  human  life  to  make  up 
the  rock  which  we  call  character. 

Now,  it  is  according  to  the  worth  and  might 
of  this  character  that  the  man  or  woman  suc- 
ceeds or  fails.  Let  me  return  to  my  cross 
and  gentle  masters,  of  whom  I  have  spoken 
already.  For  here  is  what  men  and  women  are 
always  forgetting  ;  what  both  of  them,  perhaps, 
forget.  If  the  character  is  light  and  trivial,  no 
matter  how  elegant  the  accomplishment  nor  how 
ingenious  the  tool  of  one's  labor.  So  there  be 
no  might  and  force  behind,  tool  and  accomplish- 
ment are  flung  away ;  and,  as  human  lives  are 
tested  by  whatever  fire  or  whatever  flood,  the 


WHAT    CAREER?  171 

revelation  which  is  made,  and  cannot  be  escaped, 
is  a  revelation  of  how  much  might  and  force 
and  strength  of  character  there  is  in  the  man. 
Pathetic  enough  is  it  to  see  this  in  any  moment 
of  history.  In  Queen  Anne's  time,  for  instance, 
a  hundred  and  seventy  years  ago  in  England, 
there  were  noblemen  and  noble-women,  court 
beauties,  court  jesters,  and  court  gallants  in 
London  ;  there  were  politicians  working  for  the 
queen,  and  politicians  working  against  her  ;  there 
were  actors  and  actresses  who  were  the  talk  and 
toast  of  all  England ,  poets  and  other  writers 
who  were  libelling  each  other,  libelling  half  the 
people  in  the  land,  and  not  forgetting  to  libel 
the  crown.  In  the  midst  of  them  all  was  Isaac 
Newton,  whom  every  one  respected ;  yes,  but 
neither  courtier,  actor,  poet,  nor  satirist  knew 
that  his  work,  his  power,  and  so  his  name  would 
outlive  them  all.  The  prime  minister  rode  to 
his  office,  and  flattered  himself  that  Newton  was 
specially  gratified  when  his  lordship  recognized 
him  as  he  passed  in  at  the  office  door,  —  Newton 
being  master  of  the  mint.  To  give  a  man  an 
appointment  in  the  mint  was  the  only  way  in 


172  WHAT    CAREER? 

which  Government  could  acknowledge,  what 
the  Government  knew,  that  here  was  the  great 
thinker,  great  scholar,  great  man  of  the  time. 
Well,  time  rolls  by,  and  we  find  what  was  what. 
First,  the  memory  of  the  actors'  and  the  act- 
resses' paint  and  powder  die.  Then  dies  the 
memory  of  the  trashy  plays  they  acted.  Then 
dies  the  memory  of  the  intrigues  of  the  men  of 
party.  Treaty  of  this,  treaty  of  that;  Marl- 
borough's  victories.  Bolingbroke's  lies,  — we  have 
forgotten  them  all.  By  and  by  the  books  are  re- 
membered only  as  names  in  literature.  Persons 
of  tact  who  know  they  ought  to  have  them  in 
their  libraries  are  tempted  to  make  the  sets  out 
of  wood  with  well-gilt  leather  covers.  Of  Mr. 
Pope,  a  man  of  true  genius,  by  far  the  most 
brilliant  author  of  them  all,  a  Harvard  grad- 
uate said  the  other  day  to  Mr.  Fields,  as  they 
looked  upon  his  portrait,  "  Were  you  acquainted 
with  Mr.  Pope,  Mr.  Fields  ?  "  So  the  fire  of  time 
tries  these  reputations.  So  the  straw  burns, 
the  stubble,  the  lath,  and  the  rafter  ;  the  stucco 
and  plaster  crumble  and  give  way.  But  in 
the  midst  of  it  something  remains:  it  is  the 


WHAT    CAREER?  173 

work  which  stands  for  character,  and  represents 
character.  The  work  of  Newton  stands  un- 
changed :  his  name  too  may  be  forgotten,  but  his 
work  is  here.  He  helped  men  one  step  nearer 
to  their  God.  He  brought  in  Law  where  all 
was  lawless.  He  did  this,  he  said,  by  untiring 
industry  and  determined  perseverance,  not  by 
any  flash  of  brilliant  inspiration.  On  the  strand 
of  the  Eternal  Ocean  he  picked  up  a  few  peb- 
bles, and  these  pebbles  are  as  truly  jewels  of 
eternal  lustre  as  they  ever  were. 

"  Nature  and  Nature's  Law  lay  hid  in  night  — 
God  said  '  Let  Newton  be,'  and  all  was  light" 

This  is  what  one  of  those  brilliant  wits  of  his 
own  time  said  of  him,  and  said  truly.  And  that 
service  rendered  by  faith  and  courage  to  human- 
ity stands,  and  will  stand.  His  name  may  be 
forgotten  like  the  rest.  But  in  the  higher  cer- 
tainty of  truth,  in  the  nearer  walk  with  God,  in 
the  clearer  significance  of  Law,  are  testimonies 
never  to  be  lost  of  the  might  and  wealth  and 
worth  of  character.  Work  done  for  the  day,  by 
the  creatures  of  a  day,  has  died  with  the  day. 
Work  done  for  the  eternities,  by  the  eternal 


174  WHAT    CAREER? 

powers  which  a  child  of  God  enlists  in  his  ser- 
vice, is  work  as  real  now  as  it  was  then.  The 
man's  name  is  forgotten,  or  it  is  remembered. 
That  is  nothing.  The  work  stands  unchanged, 
and  the  contrast  is  the  contrast  between  the 
worthlessness  of  mere  accomplishment  and  the 
value  to  all  time  of  the  work  of  character. 

I  think  the  habit  of  our  country  leads  men  to 
forget  this  contrast. 

True,  there  is  not  a  wood-cutter  in  Maine  or 
Minnesota  but  knows  that  the  weight  of  the  axe 
and  the  swiftness  of  the  stroke  are  what  tell  in 
the  cutting  of  the  tree ;  that  the  sharpness  of 
the  axe  is  nothing  unless  there  be  weight  and 
swiftness  behind  it.  There  is  not  a  man  of 
them  who  would  go  into,  the  wilderness  expect- 
ing to  clear  his  farm  with  sharp-bladed  pen- 
knives or  well-polished  scissors.  Yet  the  same 
men,  as  they  look  round  for  their  heroes,  as 
they  give  applause  or  as  they  give  votes,  are  as 
likely  as  any  men  to  be  misled  by  the  brilliancy 
of  accomplishment,  and  to  forget  the  necessity, 
if  the  work  is  to  last,  of  the  weight  and  force 
which  only  belong  to  character.  I  think  our 


WHAT    CAREER?  175 

habit  —  what  was  our  necessity  —  of  seeking 
immediate  results,  leads  to  this.  As  we  burned 
down  the  forests,  and  now  find  too  late  that  we 
have  caused  by  our  folly  higher  freshets  in  the 
spring  and  longer  droughts  in  the  summer,  so 
we  applaud  some  showy  fool  in  the  pulpit, 
or  elect  men  to  office  for  their  ease  in  public 
speaking,  to  find  only  too  late  that  the  children 
do  not  know  what  the  word  religion  means,  and 
that  the  destinies  of  the  State  have  not  been 
confided  to  statesmen.  This  mistake,  whenever 
it  is  committed,  is  the  mistake  of  preferring 
accomplishment  above  character,  —  a  mistake 
fatal  whether  it  is  made  in  education,  in  our 
estimate  of  ourselves  and  our  plan  of  our  duty, 
in  our  selection  of  other  men  for  office,  or  in  the 
verdict  of  praise  and  censure  which  we  render 
to  the  servants  of  the  State  or  of  the  Church. 

We  meet  every  day  the  broken-bladed  pen- 
knives, —  people  who  have  tried  to  do  the  work 
of  axes,  and  have  failed  because  they  had  not 
weight  enough.  Such  men  are  looking  round 
for  patrons  and  letters  of  recommendation. 
They  think  this  man  was  successful  because  of 


176  WHAT    CAREER? 

his  uncle's  influence,  and  that  one  because  he 
was  a  freemason ;  and  then  say  bitter  things 
of  society  because  society  does  not  help  them 
forward.  The  truth  is,  all  the  while,  that 
there  is  nothing  to  help,  nothing  to  endorse, 
nothing  to  rely  upon.  The  man  has  failed,  not 
because  he  had  no  uncles  or  no  endorsers,  but 
because  he  had  no  weight,  no  steadfastness, 
no  character. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  I  meet  every  day 
this  man  and  that  woman  who  cannot  see  why 
God  leaves  them  to  such  petty  detail  in  the 
work  of  his  army.  "  Why  should  I  be  left  to 
take  care  of  babies,  while  Penthesilea  can  lead 
Amazons  into  action?  "  "  Why  should  I  be  left 
to  take  a  class  in  a  Sunday-school,  while  at  my  age 
William  Pitt  was  Prime  Minister  of  England  ?  " 
Why,  but  because  the  good  God,  who  has  some- 
thing better  at  stake  than  the  work  of  Amazons 
or  of  prime  ministers,  has  devised  these  schools 
for  the  creation  of  your  character.  Dear  boy, 
you  did  nothing  all  last  week,  in  your  new 
employ,  but  to  add  up  units  and  carry  tens,  and 
add  tens  and  carry  hundreds  ;  and  you  are  sure 


WHAT    CAREER?  177 

that  you  could  have  done  so  much  more  and  so 
much  better,  but  no  man  asked  you.  Is  the 
new  employ,  for  that,  mere  slavery  to  you? 
Only  see  what  is  the  true  sum  of  your  figures 
and  the  true  product  of  your  multiplication. 
Be  sure,  you,  that  five  years  hence,  when  some- 
body wants  a  man  of  might,  of  trust,  of  honor, 
of  integrity,  and  looks  for  him  in  that  crypt 
where  you  are  adding  and  multiplying,  the 
search  shall  not  be  made  in  vain.  Show, 
then,  that  among  a  thousand  ciphers  there 
is  one  real  value.  Among  a  thousand  names, 
let  there  be  one  child  of  God.  Show,  then  and 
there,  what  the  service  of  five  faithful  years  caii 
do  in  creating  character. 

As  I  watch  men  of  affairs,  I  find  one  set  who, 
as  they  say,  make  one  hand  wash  another. 
They  are  rushing  round  at  one  o'clock  to  pick 
up  the  funds  to  pay  the  note  which  falls  due 
at  two. 

I  find   another   set,    more    thoughtful,   who 

know  to-day  what  they  are  to  do  next  Friday,  — 

know,  as  they  would  say,  where  they  shall  be 

next  Saturday,  —  who  are  thus  prepared  in  ad- 

8* 


178  WHAT    CAREER? 

vance  for  any  exigency  in  business.     You  can- 
not take  them  by  surprise. 

And,  once  more,  I  hear  of  a  third  set  some- 
times. I  hear  traditions  of  the  great  men  of 
affairs,  whose  dealings  have  been  governed  by 
combinations  which  were  years  in  maturing ; 
who  knew  how  many  acres  of  this  world  were 
planted  with  coffee  four  years  before,  how  many 
three  years  before,  what  would  be  the  probable 
crop  two  years  after,  and  three,  and  four.  Such 
are  the  men  not  satisfied  to  imitate  their  rivals,  to 
do  as  others  do,  to  work  by  rule  of  thumb ;  but 
who  have  a  principle,  on  which  even  commerce 
adjusts  itself.  I  might  say  the  first  of  these  is 
a  merchant  by  knack ;  the  second,  a  merchant 
by  system ;  the  third,  a  merchant  on  principle. 
That  familiar  series  illustrates  for  us  sufficiently 
a  gradation  vastly  more  important,  —  a  grada- 
tion in  men's  lives,  related  not  to  the  laws  of 
trade,  but  to  the  eternal  realities.  Men  and 
women  of  accomplishment  are  living  for  the 
more  immediate  effect,  and  trusting  the  im- 
mediate effort.  Men  and  women  of  mere  sys- 
tem are  only  repeating  what  some  schoolmaster 


WHAT    CAREER?  179 

or  some  cyclopaedia  suggested.  But  men  and 
women  of  character  ! — ah,  there  we  stand  with 
those  who  are  not  satisfied  with  time!  They 
are  not  satisfied  with  to-day's  effort  or  to-day's 
success.  Nay,  they  are  not  satisfied  to  know 
that  next  week  this  shall  be  adjusted,  or  that 
smoothed  away.  They  are  not  satisfied  till 
the  word  they  speak  shall  ring  as  true  as  the 
eternal  word,  and  the  house  they  build  be  built 
upon  the  rock  eternal.  There  is  the  man,  there 
is  the  woman,  to  whom,  in  crisis  or  in  calamity, 
friend,  neighbor,  country  turn.  There  is  the 
man,  there  is  the  woman,  who  in  new  exigency 
rises  to  the  exigency;  needs  not  to  be  taught 
what  to  do  or  how  to  do  it,  but  does  it  as 
from  "native  impulse,  elemental  force."  There 
is  the  man  or  woman  whose  work  stands. 
Their  names  may  be  forgotten.  So  are  the 
names  of  almost  all  martyrs.  But  their  lives 
live  in  the  higher  life  of  a  world  renewed ! 


180  WHAT    CAREER? 


VII. 
RESPONSIBILITIES   OF   YOUNG    MEN. 

AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  IN  THE  SOUTH  CONGREGATIONAL 
CHURCH,  BOSTON.    MARCH  22,  1874. 

T  HAVE  tried,  a  hundred  times,  to  illustrate 
in  this  place  the  duty  of  young  men  who 
go  out  from  an  old  community  like  ours  into 
the  new  States  or  the  new  Territories.  In  one 
year  I  parted  from  four  such  young  men.  I 
had  with  each  of  them  most  serious  talk  as 
to  the  great  duty  before  them  and  the  noble 
responsibility  before  them.  Frederick  Wads- 
worth  Loring  was  one  of  them.  There  are 
young  men  here  who  well  remember  him  in 
school,  —  a  quick,  intense  boy,  putting  ques- 
tions far  in  advance  of  his  years,  while  he  was 
not  easily  satisfied  with  commonplace  answers,  I 
suppose.  I  remember  seeing  him  when  he  was 
but  seven  years  old,  so  quick,  so  mature,  that  I 
despaired  of  his  growing  to  manhood.  But  he 


WHAT    CAREER?  181 

did  grow  to  manhood,  in  strong  health,  too,  — 
such  a  mother  had  he  and  such  a  father,  —  and 
without  the  loss  of  any  of  the  qualities  which 
made  his  childhood  admirable.  Pure  and  affec- 
tionate, he  passed  through  college  with  a  lit- 
erary taste  and  accomplishment  hardly  equalled 
at  his  age.  He  devoted  himself  to  a  life  of 
letters ; 1  and  as  correspondent  of  one  or  two  of 
our  leading  journals  he  went  with  one  of  the 
Government  surveying  parties  into  Arizona  and 
California.  As  he  was  returning,  strong  and 
well,  the  stage  coach  in  which  he  rode  was  at- 
tacked by  Indians  and  he  was  instantly  killed. 

Frank  Russell  Firth,  who  was  not  one  of 
our  number  here,  but  sometimes  joined  us  in 
our  afternoon  service,  the  personal  friend  of 
many  to  whom  I  speak,  was  the  first  boy  I 
knew  among  the  pupils  in  the  Technological 
School.  He  distinguished  himself  there  as  he 
did  everywhere,  and  graduated  in  their  first 

1  Beside  articles  in  different  journals,  Mr.  Loring  published 
"  Two  College  Friends,"  Boston,  1871.  He  made  the  plan  for 
"  Six  of  One  and  Half  a  Dozen  of  the  Other,"  and  contributed 
two  poems  to  it.  Many  of  his  poems  are  in  "Poetry  of  the 
Advocate ; "  and  a  volume  of  them  was  published  in  1871. 


182  WHAT    CAREER? 

class  in  1868.  He  looked  round  for  his  place  in 
the  world,  as  all  young  men  have  to,  and  as  they 
all  wonder  that  they  have  to  ;  was  never  dis- 
couraged, used  every  moment  wisely  and  well, 
and,  when  he  was  hardly  of  age,  was  in  charge 
of  an  important  railroad  line  in  Kansas  and 
Nebraska.  On  a  tour  of  inspection,  he  sta- 
tioned himself  on  the  front  of  the  engine  of  his 
train,  that  he  might  note  rightly  the  deflection  of 
a  bridge  which  they  were  to  pass.  The  bridge 
gave  way,  and  Frank  Firth  was  crushed  under 
the  engine.  He  lived  scarcely  long  enough  to  see 
his  father,  and  to  bid  his  friends  good-by. 

With  him  at  the  moment  was  Otis  Everett 
Allen,  also  known  to  many  of  you.  He  had 
just  graduated  at  Harvard  College,  the  honored 
son  of  an  honored  father,  one  of  my  near  friends. 
His  father  died  just  as  he  entered  college,  and 
this  boy  was  loyally  entering  on  life  in  the  manly 
wish  to  do  for  his  mother  and  his  sister  what  man 
might  do.  Between  him  and  Firth  there  was  an 
attachment  as  of  the  heroes  of  romance.  He  had 
joined  him  on  his  perilous  post  of  duty,  and 
died  instantly  in  the  same  fatal  fall. 


WHAT    CAREER?  183 

Of  these  two  young  men  a  little  biography- 
has  been  published  this  winter,  well  worthy  the 
careful  reading  of  every  boy  who  hears  me,  and 
who  is  old  enough  to  be  asking  himself  what  is 
to  be  his  place  in  life.1  I  have  read  it  myself 
again  and  again,  and  I  have  perhaps  learned  as 
much  from  it  as  from  any  book,  as  to  the  ques- 
tion what  our  first-rate  schools  do  for  the  first- 
rate  boys  who  go  to  them,  and  what  the  first-rate 
boys  mean  to  do  for  the  world.  I  associate  these 
three  lives  and  these  three  deaths,  indissolubly 
with  the  life  and  death  of  a  fourth  young  man, 
—  much  better  known  to  you  than  any  of  these 
of  whom  I  have  spoken. 

George  Gilman  Chapin  was  the  first  boy  whom 
I  baptized  in  the  public  service  of  this  church. 
I  have  never  forgotten  the  manly  way  in  which 
he  came  to  me,  at  his  father's  side,  nor  the  mod- 
esty and  intelligence  of  his  nature,  —  which 
showed  even  then,  when  I  supposed  he  was  not 
nine  years  old,  that  his  interest  in  the  whole 
service  was  devout  and  real.  It  was  impossible 

1  "  The  Young  Engineer."  A  Memoir  of  Frank  Russell 
Firth.  With  a  sketch  of  the  Life  of  Otis  Everett  Allen. 
Boston:  1874. 


184  WHAT    CAREER? 

not  to  be  interested  in  such  a  boy ;  and  never  in 
after  life  did  he  fail  to  make  good  the  bright 
omen  of  that  morning  in  Whitsuntide. 

He  entered  Harvard  College,  and  worked 
there  with  distinction,  but  left  before  graduating. 
He  was  the  practical  and  efficient  secretary  of 
our  Young  People's  Society  here,  ready  to  lend 
a  hand  wherever  he  could  be  of  service.  It 
was  but  a  little  after  Firth  and  Allen  died,  that 
I  met  him  in  St.  Paul  in  Minnesota,  where  he 
had  established  himself,  and  where  everybody 
honored  him  and  respected  him.  I  was  with  him 
a  great  deal  while  I  was  there.  There  never 
was  a  more  beautiful  instance  of  the  way  in 
which  a  conscientious  and  highly-trained  young 
man  could  carry  to  a  new  community  just  what 
a  new  community  needs.  I  was  proud  of  him 
and  of  all  that  he  was  doing.  And  then,  that 
curtain  dropped  too.  A  little  while  after,  and 
he  died  almost  as  suddenly  as  the  others,  from  a 
violent  typhoid  fever.  I  had  seen  him,  as  it 
seemed,  for  the  last  time. 

One  may  well  compare  such  losses  in  the 
great  investment  which  we  are  all  the  time  mak- 


WHAT    CAREER?  185 

ing,  for  the  building  up  of  our  country,  with  the 
losses  of  the  Civil  War.  Death  did  not  come 
then  more  often,  more  sadly,  nor  more  suddenly, 
when  our  brave  boys  went  to  battle  as  frankly 
and  as  willingly  as  you  boys  go  to  a  ball  or  to  the 
play.  To  us  who  are  left,  it  is  no  little  lesson 
which  we  learn  when  such  deaths  arrest  our 
attention,  if  we  can  see  how  important  is  the 
place  which  young  men  hold  in  social  order. 
While  such  men  live,  we  are  looking  forward 
to  their  future.  It  is  when  they  die,  we  look 
back  and  begin  to  count  their  worth. 

And  I  observe,  as  I  know  you  young  men 
observe,  that  in  new  communities  the  value 
of  the  element  of  young  life  is  apprehended. 
When  you  read  of  the  traditions  of  New  Eng- 
land, you  will  find  that  such  or  such  a  man,  the 
founder  of  a  town,  heard  of  a  good  man  at  some 
settlement,  and  rode  down  there  to  see  if  he 
could  not  secure  him.  He  would  know  that  his 
town  could  not  thrive  without  men,  and  so  he 
would  go  down  and  offer  such  a  homestead, 
such  a  mowing  lot,  such  a  stand  for  a  black- 
smith's shop,  if  only  the  man  would  come. 


186  WHAT    CAREER? 

Now,  you  do  not  see  in  exactly  the  same  form 
that  necessity  now.  But  none  the  less  is  it  true 
that  at  this  hour  America  differs  from  all  the 
rest  of  the  world  except  Australia,  and  is  for 
real  life  a  better  country  to  grow  up  in  than 
the  older  parts  of  the  world,  because  of,  I 
think,  the  larger  opportunities  given  here  to 
young  men.  I  am  afraid  that  the  young  men 
of  cities  do  not  recognize  this.  But  I  have  no 
doubt  that  it  is  true.  More  than  once  have  I 
heard  young  Americans  laugh  as  they  described 
their  first  interviews  with  their  business  corre- 
spondents in  London,  when  they  noted  the 
extreme  surprise  with  which  those  elderly  men 
found  out  that  they  had  been  corresponding  on 
terms  of  equality  with  gentlemen  who,  when 
they  came  in  person,  looked,  as  they  would  say, 
like  boys.  Take  our  country  through,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  we  have  this  great  advantage  of 
a  new  country.  So  long  as  every  man  may  have 
his  own  farm  by  going  and  taking  it,  the  habit 
or  tendency  of  young  men  will  be  to  establish 
themselves,  instead  of  living  in  what  they  re- 
gard dependence.  So  the  earlier  generations 


WHAT    CAREER?  187 

here  grew  up,  —  and  that  principle  survives. 
George  "Washington  was  almost  the  Nestor  of 
the  men  with  whom  he  advised  in  the  war. 
They  are  always  speaking  of  his  dignity  and 
even  his  venerable  aspect.  He  was  forty-three 
when  it  began.  Greene,  his  only  second,  was 
thirty-five  ;  Pickering,  his  commissary-general, 
was  twenty-five  ;  Hamilton,  his  favorite  aid,  was 
twenty  when  he  was  appointed  to  that  position, 
and  Lafayette  was  commissioned  major-general 
when  he  was  nineteen.  Hancock  was  thirty- 
nine  when,  as  president  of  Congress,  he  signed 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  That  sort  of 
willingness  to  intrust  important  duty  to  men  in 
young  life  has  never  died  out  of  the  country. 
I  find  that  the  average  age  of  the  representa- 
tives in  Congress  this  year  is  forty-three  years. 
Almost  all  these  men  must  have  served  in  their 
own  States  in  trusts  of  importance  before  they 
came  to  Congress.  I  believe  the  habit  is  readily 
accounted  for  by  reference  to  the  requisitions  on 
any  new  country.  It  is  the  habit  of  a  frontier, 
of  new  exigencies ;  and  it  has  been  and  is,  as  I 
believe,  to  this  country,  a  constant  blessing. 


188  WHAT    CAREER? 

Let  me  read  you  a  little  passage  from  Mr. 
Beecher, — which  I  found  since  I  wrote  this 
sermon,  in  a  sermon  of  his  which  I  wish  you 
would  all  read,  —  which  he  calls  "  Manhood  in 
America."  He  says :  — 

"  The  value  of  all  men,  without  regard  to 
race  or  condition,  is  the  essential,  democratic, 
American  idea.  The  true  democratic  idea  is 
that  '  a  man 's  a  man  for  a'  that,'  or  this  or  that 
or  any  thing  else.  The  real  democratic  Ameri- 
can idea  is,  not  that  a  man  shall  be  on  a  level 
with  every  other  man,  'but  that  every  man  shall 
be  what  God  made  him,  without  let  or  hin- 
drance ;  that  there  shall  be  no  prejudice  against 
him  if  he  be  high,  and  that  no  disgrace  shall 
attach  to  him  if  he  be  low  ;  that  he  shall  have 
supreme  possession  of  what  he  has  and  what  he 
is ;  that  he  shall  have  liberty  to  use  his  forces 
in  any  proper  direction." 

Now  this  is  as  true  regarding  young  men  as  it 
is  of  black  men  or  red  men,  rich  men  or  poor 
men.  They  shall  have  liberty  to  use  their 
forces  in  any  proper  direction. 

And  that  habit  of  the  country  ought  to  be 


WHAT    CAREER?  189 

recognized  by  young  men  who  have  had  advan- 
tages above  the  average  in  early  training.  Such 
men  have  to  ask  themselves,  What  is  the  place 
of  young  men  in  American  life  ?  And  I  do  not 
now  put  that  question  for  those  who  go  away 
from  us  into  the  wilderness.  There  are  not  a 
few  young  men,  let  us  be  thankful,  who  remain 
here  at  home.  It  is  the  opportunities  and  re- 
sponsibilities which  come  before  them  as  young 
men,  which  occupy  us  to-day. 

Well,  they  are  prompt  to  say  that  theirs  is 
not  the  average  American  lot;  that  promotion 
here  is  not  rapid  ;  that  it  is  all  as  if  they  were 
in  an  old  country.  I  believe  this  is  only  partly 
true ;  but  if  it  were  wholly  true,  it  would  not 
affect  what  I  have  to  say  of  their  duties. 

The  illustrations  I  have  taken  for  convenience 
from  the  Revolution,  are  illustrations  from  mili- 
tary or  political  life.  But  I  should  say  that  the 
first  lesson  for  a  young  man  in  Boston  to  learn, 
would  be  that,  though  every  man  has  an  impor- 
tant duty  to  his  country,  there  are  a  thousand 
ways  to  discharge  that  duty  without  fighting 
for  her,  or  going  into,  the  legislature,  or  trying 


190  WHAT    CAREER? 

to  do  so.  We  are  deceived  here  by  the  accidents 
of  present  history.  Probably  some  man  is  now 
at  work  in  Boston,  studying  over  some  chemical 
process,  or  some  mechanical  invention,  which 
fifty  years  hence  will  be  referred  to  as  one  of 
the  great  social  improvements  of  our  time ;  as 
men  speak  of  the  railroad  now,  or  of  the  inven- 
tion of  the  sewing-machine,  or  of  Grove's  and 
Daniell's  sustaining  batteries,  which  made  the 
telegraph  possible.  You  and  I  do  not  know 
who  these  men  are  who  are  pushing  these 
researches.  No !  They  do  not  try  their  ex- 
periments in  Faneuil  Hall,  or  on  the  Common. 
And  so,  because  the  people  who  do  try  their 
experiments  in  public,  go  into  print,  so  that 
you  and  I  read  about  them  night  and  morning, 
we  persuade  ourselves,  if  we  are  foolish,  that 
they  are  the  most  important  people  of  our  time. 
But  not  if  we  are  wise — only  a  little  wise. 
For  then  we  know  that  Robert  Fulton  did  a 
greater  work  for  this  country  than  ever  James 
Madison  did  ;  and  that  Whitney,  who  was  the 
inventor  of  the  cotton  gin,  did  more  to  establish 
American  wealth  and  the  prosperity  of  the 


WHAT    CAREER?  191 

Southern  States  than  all  the  Southern  orators 
and  statesmen  of  his  time  or  of  all  time  put 
together. 

I.  The  first  lesson  of  any  man,  I  should  say, 
must  be  that  he  must  serve  his  kind,  —  and  of 
course  his  country,  —  but  that  this  is  to  be  in 
the  line  of  his  own  genius.  That  phrase  is  Mr. 
Emerson's  ;  and  if  a  man  do  not  know  what  is 
the  line  of  his  own  genius,  as  most  of  us  do  not 
know,  let  a  man  be  sure  that  whatever  advan- 
tages he  has  gained  in  boyhood  anywhere  be 
steadily  improved  upon.  For  God  reigns ;  and 
it  is  as  sure  as  that,  that  God  will  call,  even  to 
the  front,  every  child  of  his  who  has  any  service 
to  render.  The  standing  difficulty  in  the  long 
run  is  not  want  of  places,  but  want  of  men. 
You  find  it  very  hard  to  believe  this  now,  when 
you  see  every  advertisement  for  a  clerk  answered 
by  two  hundred  applicants.  But  once  go  be- 
hind the  scenes  of  practical  life,  —  once  hear 
the  careful  inquiry  made  by  men  of  large  under- 
takings and  large  results,  where  they  can  find 
men  of  large  capacity,  or  men  of  absolute  hon- 


192  WHAT    CAREER? 

esty,  or  men  of  hard  perseverance,  or  even  men 
who,  being  well  up  in  their  specialty,  neither 
drink  nor  lie  nor  steal,  —  and  you  will  under- 
stand what  I -mean  when  I  say  the  need,  on  the 
whole,  is  the  need  of  men.  You  will  see  a  man 
is  bound  in  honor  to  improve  the  ability  he  has 
while  he  can  improve  it,  and  to  be  ready  for  the 
exigency  which  it  is  certain  will  come.  It 
comes  sooner  to  one  man  than  to  another.  Yes : 
it  comes  to  one  man  in  the  demands  of  a  great 
invention.  It  comes  to  another  man  because 
there  is  a  new  necessity  in  literature.  It  comes 
to  another  man  in  some  new  arrangement  of 
government.  It  comes  to  another  man  because 
he  proves  to  be  a  born  apostle  of  some  lesson  in 
the  Gospel  not  before  wrought  out  sufficiently. 
It  comes  to  another  man  in  the  horrors  of  civil 
war.  It  comes  in  different  ways,  but  to  each 
man  it  comes.  I  do  not  say  fame  comes,  nor 
money,  nor  comfort,  nor  happiness  ;  but  I  say 
that  such  is  the  blessing  of  an  eager  young 
country  like  ours,  which  lives  a  century  in  every 
year,  that  opportunity  comes  to  every  man ; 
opportunity  to  serve  mankind  and  so  to  serve 


WHAT    CAREER?  193 

God ;  opportunity  to  make  two  blades  of  grass 
grow  somewhere  where  only  one  blade  grew  be- 
fore; opportunity  to  leave  the  world  a  better 
world  than  he  found  it. 

II.  But  woe  to  the  man  who  is  not  ready  for 
the  opportunity  when  it  comes  !  Here  is  the 
pith  and  point  of  the  parable  which  describes 
the  mysterious  coming  of  the  Son  of  God,  and 
tells  how  some  are  ready  for  the  wedding,  and 
some  have  their  wicks  burned  dry  and  their 
lamps  empty.  In  that  is  just  the  difference  be- 
tween the  man  who,  when  there  is  something  to 
do,  is  eager  to  try  to  do  it,  and  the  other  man, 
who  is  not  all  a  man,  who  is  not  ready,  and 
knows  he  must  let  the  moment  go  by.  The  old 
symbolic  image  of  Time  had  that  one  forelock 

• 

on  the  forehead,  and  one  must  catch  at  that  or 
he  could  catch  nowhere.  And,  as  we  say  every 
day,  in  this  country  of  ours,  and  in  our  civiliza- 
tion, "  Time  moves  more  quickly  fhan  he  ever 
did  before."  That  is  true.  And  a  man  needs 
to  be  more  ready  than  ever  before  to  be  of  use 
when  his  moment  does  appear.  And  this  is  cer- 
9 


194  WHAT    CAREER? 

tain,  that  he  will  not  find  his  opportunity  by 
sitting  in  the  reading-room  of  a  hotel,  with  his 
feet  upon  the  window-seat,  looking  out  into  the 
street,  and  seeing  if  the  opportunity  will  ride 
up  the  street  or  ride  down.  I  do  not  think  that 
he  will  find  his  opportunity  by  going  to  ward 
meetings,  arranging  that  William  shall  be  cho- 
sen overseer  of  the  poor,  and  John  be  chosen 
school-committee  man.  I  hope  he  will  go  to 
the  ward  caucus,  but  I  hope  he  will  not  expect 
to  find  his  opportunity  in  life  there.  No ;  his 
opportunity  to  serve  the  world  comes  as  he  im- 
proves his  own  ability ;  and,  speaking  generally, 
this  is  to  be  his  ability  in  the  walk  of  life  in 
which  he  is. 

Is  he  a  manufacturer  ?  Let  him  know  to  the 
bottom  the  chemistry,  the  history,  and  the  com- 
bination of  the  articles  he  makes.  Let  him 
some  day  make  them  better.  Is  he  a  merchant? 
Let  him,  at  the  end  of  this  month,  know 
something  about  his  own  line  of  goods  that  he 
did  not  know  when  the  month  began.  Is  he  a 
man  of  letters  ?  Let  him  fill  up  faster  than  he 
pumps  out  from  the  cistern.  The  man  who  is 


WHAT    CAREER?  195 

always  enlarging  what  is  after  all  a  man's  real 
capital,  need  not  be  afraid  to  meet  the  world 
fairly. 

Or  it  may  be,  of  course,  that  it  is  not  in  a 
man's  vocation  but  in  his  avocation  that  he  is 
at  work,  getting  ready  to  be  of  more  service. 
And  I  have  no  doubt  that  every  man  should 
have  a  regular  avocation  as  well  as  a  vocation, 
were  it  only  for  that  physical  relief  of  which 
Brown-Sequard  has  been  teaching  us.  So 
George  Livermore  retired  every  day  from  his 
business — I  suppose  I  may  say  at  the  head  of 
the  wholesale  wool  merchants  of  this  city —  and 
in  his  peerless  library  made  himself  the  leader 
in  the  lines  of  delicate  and  difficult  critical 
study  which  he  selected.  So  Nathaniel  Bow- 
ditch  retired  regularly  from  his  duty  in  the  life 
office,  and  gave  a  fixed  time  to  the  translation 
of  La  Place's  "M^canique  Celeste."  So  Ben- 
jamin Franklin  retired  from  the  supervision  of 
the  best  printing-office  in  America,  to  make  the 
electrical  experiments  and  discoveries  which  in 
that  line  changed  the  science  of  the  world.  I 
select,  as  my  instances,  Boston  men,  intention- 


196  WHAT    CAREER? 

ally.  From  my  limited  acquaintance  here, 
I  could  name  a  hundred  men  who  are  doing 
something  of  just  that  sort  now,  in  lines  which 
seem  to  me  not  less  important  than  these 
which  I  have  named.  But  I  do  not  think  it 
right  to  speak  of  living  men.  And  what  I 
want  to  do  is  to  try  to  state  the  principle  upon 
which  they  are  all  working. 

They  are  determined  that  they  will  be  more 
fit  to  serve  the  king  next  year  than  they  are 
now.  That  is  the  whole  story.  They  did  not 
"  finish  their  education "  when  they  left  the 
High  School,  or  the  Dwight  School,  or  Harvard 
College.  All  of  them  have  found  a  post-grad- 
uate course  that  they  can  work  in.  For  they 
have  found  out,  all  of  them,  that  they  are  chil- 
dren of  God,  and,  as  children  of  God,  bound 
to  help  forward  somewhere  in  God's  world. 

I  hear  with  utter  satisfaction,  then  —  satisfac- 
tion with  which  nothing  else  compares  —  that 
any  two  or  three  of  my  young  friends  have 
made  a  little  club  together  to  study  chemistry 
or  electricity,  or  Italian  or  French,  or  Shaks- 
peare  or  Chaucer,  or  butterflies  or  beetles,  or 


WHAT    CAREER?  197 

botany  or  geology  (if  it  be  really  study)  ;  to  read 
"The  Science  of  Thought,"  or  the  "Proven- 
9al,"  or  the  "  Laocoon."  To  know  that  two  or 
three  young  people  have  covenanted  and  agreed 
together  that  they  will  be  worth  more  six 
months  hence  than  they  are  to-day,  —  it  in- 
volves almost  every  thing  so  far  as  they  are 
concerned.  These  studies  themselves  are  not 
to  be  spoken  of  as  trifling.  Limit  the  subjects 
resolutely,  bind  each  other  to  loyal  work,  and 
you  have  opportunities  for  really  important 
results,  leading  farther  than  you  know,  or  I. 
But  it  is  not  for  mere  results  that  I  am  anxious, 
or  am  forelooking.  It  is  for  those  who  form 
such  clubs  that  I  speak.  They  gain  the  mutual 
help,  which  is  so  much.  There  is  so  much  less 
danger  that  they  will  take  the  hand  from  the 
plough.  And  when  you  really  see,  in  a  fair  in- 
stance, that  such  a  combination  has  been  bravely 
and  faithfully  maintained,  you  may  almost  say 
that  you  are  sure  that  God  will  find  there  faith- 
ful servants ;  and  that,  when  the  bell  strikes, 
there  will  be  among  them  those  who  can  do  the 
duty  and  bear  the  burden  which  in  his  counsels 
are  imposed. 


198  WHAT    CAREER? 

Nor  does  this  which  I  am  saying  require  or 
imply  that  the  man  I  am  talking  about  is  to  give 
himself  up  to  books  after  a  day's  work  in  some 
confined  employment.  He  may  do  that,  or  he 
may  not.  The  point  is  simply  that  somehow 
and  somewhere  he  is  to  enlarge  his  working 
power.  One  man  does  this,  as  Frederic  Turell 
Gray  did  it,  by  devoting  his  off-time  to  the  poor 
around  him,  —  a  study  which  with  him  went  so 
far,  that  from  the  movements  set  on  foot  by  him 
and 'others  like  him  grew  up  the  whole  system 
of  the  Benevolent  Fraternity  of  churches  here. 
As  .he  and  those  men  saw  that  system,  and 
looked  forward  to  its  development,  it  looked 
forward  to  a  real  spiritual  oversight  of  this 
whole  city,  —  of  every  exile  in  it,  every  stranger, 
every  lonely  man  or  woman. 

That  is  the  work  of  a  young  publisher,  who 
took  this  as  his  avocation.  Some  men  do  it  in 
perfecting  a  new  invention.  Some  men  do  it 
by  making  life  tolerable  to  exiles  who  have  no 
friend  but  those  who  seek  them  half  way. 
"  How  in  the  world  did  a  busy  man  like  you 
learn  the  Hungarian  language  ? "  said  I  to  a 


WHAT    CAREER  V  199 

partner  in  one  of  the  largest  business  firms  in 
the  world.  "  Oh,"  said  he,  "  there  was  a  poor 
dog  of  a  Hungarian  officer,  who  was  starving  in 
an  attic,  and  I  found  it  comforted  him  to  have 
me  come  and  talk  with  him ;  and  it  ended  in 
our  reading  Hamlet  together  in  the  Hungarian 
version."  So,  when  the  bell  struck,  that  man 
was  ready  to  use  the  language  which  by  what 
you  please  to  call  accident  he  had  learned.  I 
know  a  man  who  learned  the  Spanish  language 
from  the  barber  who  shaved  him ;  and  he  told 
me  that  the  knowledge  was,  as  it  proved,  of 
essential  service  to  him  and  to  other  men  in  all 
his  after  life.  A  young  lady  came  to  me  once, 
complaining  of  the  sad  want  of  good  society  in 
the  manufacturing  town  of  forty  thousand 
people  in  which  she  lived.  I  told  her  she  did 
not  know  where  to  seek  it.  I  lived  in  another 
manufacturing  town  of  half  that  population ; 
and  I  told  her  that  the  only  nobleman  I  had 
ever  known,  of  absolutely  blue  blood  of  sixteen 
quarterings,  —  a  man  whose  ancestors  were 
noble  before  Columbus  guessed  at  America,  — 
was  a  man  whose  acquaintance  I  made  when  he 


200  WHAT    CAREER? 

came  to  my  front  door  and  asked  if  I  had  an  old 
coat  that  I  could  give  him.  An  accomplished 
gentleman  he  was,  too,  —  temperate,  honorable, 
and  manly.  But  he  was  an  exile,  and  in  over- 
work for  his  daily  bread  he  had  become  blind. 
Take  these  as  instances  of  the  ways  wholly  out- 
side of  closet  study,  in  which  a  man  may  be 
gaining  new  resources  and  growing  more  ready 
for  the  duty  to  which  it  may  please  God  to  call 
him. 

And  of  such  detail  I  must  say  no  more.  My 
object,  indeed,  was  not  to  speak  of  detail. 
My  object  was  to  warn  young  men  against  the 
mistake  which  the  French  and  English  books 
are  a  little  apt  to  inculcate,  —  the  mistake  of 
supposing  that  it  is  of  no  great  consequence 
where  or  how  a  man  spends  the  years  from 
twenty  to  thirty.  It  is  of  infinite  consequence. 
To  us  in  America,  in  every  step  in  social  order, 
in  every  physical  impediment,  in  every  political 
revolution,  it  is  of  visible,  palpable  importance, 
if  a  man  will  only  put  out  his  fingers  to  feel,  or 
open  his  eyes  to  see.  We  live  among  revolu- 
tions. Tremendous  tilings  are  happening  all 


WHAT    CAREER?  201 

the  time.  It  is  the  Boston  fire.  It  is  the  Sep- 
tember panic.  It  is  the  destruction  of  Chicago. 
It  is  the  Civil  War.  It  is  an  inundation  in 
Louisiana.  Or,  such  convulsions  apart,  we  live 
a  life  of  surprises.  A  city  doubles  its  popu- 
lation in  a  dozen  years.  The  whole  line  of  its 
business  changes  in  twenty.  A  new  current 
of  emigration  sets  in  here.  A  new  line  of  ex- 
ports opens  there.  All  this  means  that  America, 
while  it  is  America  and  because  it  is  America, 
needs  all  the  time  new  men  and  young  men. 
It  needs  that  these  young  men  shall  be  ready. 

And  that  readiness  is  not  to  be  the  alacrity 
of  the  fencing-master,  the  deportment  of  the 
manners-master,  the  selfishness  of  a  Pelham,  or 
the  etiquette  of  a  Chesterfield.  It  is  to  be  the 
manliness  of  a  man.  Here  is  one  more  child 
of  God.  He  is  a  child  who,  when  he  became  old 
enough  to  see  and  to  hear,  opened  his  eyes  that 
they  might  see,  his  ears  that  they  might  hear,  — 
yes,  and  his  heart  that  it  might  understand. 
Of  his  own  manly  free  will  he  determined  to  be 
"partaker  of  the  divine  nature."  That  is  some- 
thing more  than  to  be  a  rival  of  Chesterfield,  or 
9* 


202  WHAT    CAREER? 

a  disciple  of  Turveydrop.  To  be  a  "partaker 
of  the  divine  nature  ;"  to  be  as  true  as  God 
himself;  as  loving  to  those  in  need  as  God's 
Son  well  beloved  ;  as  ready  to  serve  as  the  loyal 
child  should  be  to  the  Father  who  never  fails. 
This  child  of  God  thus  determining,  thanks 
God  first,  last,  always,  that  he  has  placed  him 
in  a  society  where  each  can  lend  a  hand,  and 
where  no  man  gainsays  his  endeavor.  Proud  of 
the  ancestry  who  have  given  to  him  such  privi- 
leges, he  is  determined  that  to  his  children  these 
privileges  shall  go  down.  Then  to  the  exiles 
from  other  lands,  who  did  not  inherit  such 
privileges,  he  is  determined  that,  in  their  own 
despite,  they  shall  transmit  them  to  their  chil- 
dren !  Yes  ;  and  he  sees  and  knows  and  under- 
stands where  is  the  central  life  of  all  such 
endeavor.  That  life  came  into  the  world  when 
the  great  password  was  spoken :  "  Bear  ye  one 
another's  burdens."  That  life  began  for  the 
world-  when,  in  the  greatest  epoch  of  its  life, 
the  world  found  that  it  was  one  world,  —  of  one 
heart  and  of  one  soul.  It  began  when  men  be- 
gan to  live  each  for  each  in  infinite  attraction, 


WHAT    CAREER?  203 

and  secluded  themselves  no  longer  each  alone 
in  beastly  separation.  He  knows  the  law  of 
this  new  life.  He  knows  the  history  of  this 
new  life.  And  to  the  reunited  world,  the 
world  redeemed  in  it ;  to  the  universal  Church, 
the  kingdom  of  its  God  —  he  consecrates  his  life 
and  his  endeavor :  life  and  endeavor  never  so 
noble  or  so  beautiful  as  when  they  are  offered 
by  the  young  knight  just  as  he  is  admitted 
to  knighthood,  and  laid,  as  the  first  fruits  of 
his  manhood,  upon  the  altar  of  his  God ! 


204  WHAT    CAREER? 

VIII. 
STUDY    OUTSIDE    SCHOOL. 

T  HAVE  just  returned  from  a  visit  to  Antioch 
College,  —  an  institution  established  by  the 
Unitarian  church,  near  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  for  the  higher  education  of  the  young  peo- 
ple of  this  country,  —  especially  in  the  Middle 
States.  I  have  for  some  years  held  the  post  of 
chairman  of  the  Trustees  of  the  funds  collected 
for  this  purpose.  It  is,  therefore,  my  official 
duty  to  attend  once  a  year  at  its  commence- 
ment. 

There  is  something  very  interesting,  pathetic 
indeed,  in  the  start  upon  life  thus  made  at  such 
a  time  by  high-strung,  well-taught  young  peo- 
ple, —  quite  sure  that  they  are  to  conquer  the 
world ;  and  there  is  something  very  sweet  in 
the  sympathy  and  confidence  with  which  the 
hopes  of  the  graduates  are  regarded  by  those 
behind  them. 


WHAT    CAREER?  205 

Our  class-day  and  college  commencement, 
and  the  closing  exercises  of  all  the  schools,  are 
going  to  show  us  just  the  same  thing  here. 
And  so  I  am  going  to  talk  to  you  young  peo- 
ple about  the  use  to  be  made  of  freedom  from 
school  and  college,  —  in  continuing  the  line  of 
life  and  study  into  which  school  or  college  have 
introduced  you. 

For  I  suppose  there  is  no  time  when  a  boy 
or  girl  feels  the  worth  of  school-training  as  they 
do  at  the  moment  when  they  leave  it  for  ever. 
When  the  chance  is  over,  you  feel  that  you  could 
have  done  more  with  it.  When  you  see  how 
others  have  improved,  you  wonder  why  you  did 
not  take  the  same  steps  as  they.  You  pack  up 
the  elementary  school  books,  to  say,  "  Some- 
time and  somehow,  I  will  know  more  of  these 
things  than  the  elements."  Nay,  even  if  you 
look  back  with  relief  on  the  old  restrictions 
which  are  done  with  for  ever,  duly  grateful 
that  for  you  study-bells  and  regular  atten- 
dance in  the  class-room  exist  no  longer,  that 
sense  of  freedom  suggests  the  resolve  that  the 
free  man  shall  use  time  to  more  advantage  than 


206  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  boy  found  when  he  was  thus  hampered  and 
crippled  by  chains  and  rules. 

Well,  I  begin  with  saying  to  my  young  friends 
that  the  plans  they  form  now  of  continuing 
school  studies  on  a  more  generous  plan,  less 
cramped  and  more  in  unison  with  their  tastes, 
are  wholly  justified  in  the  resources  open  to 
them  here,  and  in  the  omnipotence  of  their 
period  of  life,  if  only  they  will  hold  to  the  hope 
or  plan  with  tolerable  loyalty.  Other  dreams 
of  youth  may  be  fallible  and  foolish,  but  the 
determination  of  the  boy  or  girl  of  seventeen  to 
be  through  life  a  scholar  is  in  no  sense  fallible 
or  foolish  in  the  conditions  of  society  among  us. 
No  matter  who  or  what  that  boy  or  girl  may  be. 
Printer's  boy  like  Franklin ;  bound  girl  in  a 
log-cabin  like  Mrs.  Farnham  ;  merchant's  clerk 
like  George  Livermore  ;  shoemaker's  apprentice 
like  Henry  Wilson  or  Roger  Sherman,  —  any  one 
who  determines  at  seventeen  to  use  an  hour  each 
morning  and  an  hour  each  night  in  systematic 
study,  will  come  out  at  the  end  of  twenty  years 
among  the  systematic  scholars  of  the  land. 
They  are  not  a  large  class,  but  they  are  a  class 


WHAT    CAREER  V  207 

of  men  and  women  happy,  contented,  and  use- 
ful ;  happy  and  contented  because  useful,  and 
useful  because  happy  and  contented. 

Now  I  am  going  to  speak  specially,  to-day, 
not  of  general  training  for  life,  but  simply  of 
these  visions  and  hopes  of  school  boys  and 
school  girls  for  keeping  up  mental  training ;  I 
am  going  to  speak  of  what  I  believe  the  best 
methods  and  the  necessary  cautions,  as  far  as 
I  can,  from  my  own  experience. 

I.  First  of  all,  I  am  speaking  of  and  I  sup- 
pose myself  speaking  to  young  people  who 
have  regular  work  to  do  in  this  world  besides 
keeping  up  the  studies  of  school.  My  first 
business  is  to  tell  them  that  their  position  has 
distinct  advantages,  and  that  their  disadvantages 
for  study  do  not  overweigh  the  advantages,  —  as 
I  hope  I  shall  show.  I  have,  therefore,  sug- 
gested that  I  do  not  expect  them  to  give  more 
than  twelve  hours  a  week,  or  two  hours  a  day, 
to  the  regular  study  which  I  suppose  them  to  be 
undertaking.  This  is  more  time  than  the  average 
professional  man  —  doctor,  lawyer,  clergyman, 


208  WHAT    CAREER? 

or  civil  engineer  —  gives  to  general  systematic 
study.  Any  such  man  would  be  glad  indeed  if 
anybody  would  guarantee  him  two  hours  for 
systematic  work  in  general  study,  aside  from 
what  he  has  to  give  to  the  bread-and-butter 
work,  or  hand-to-mouth  work,  in  which  he  takes 
up  to-day  the  particular  information  which  he 
needs  for  the  particular  requisition  of  to-morrow. 
Two  hours  a  day  of  systematic  study,  if  you 
can  get  it,  is  all  that  any  men,  but  the  two  or 
three  who  are  exceptionally  favored,  pretend  to 
use  for  it  as  the  year  goes  round. 

II.  With  regard  to  the  subject  of  reading  or 
study,  you  begin  now  to  find  the  advantage  of 
leaving  school.  School  lays  a  foundation.  From 
the  nature  of  the  case  it  has  to  lay  the  same 
foundation  for  you  all.  One  of  the  wisest  and 
wittiest  women  of  our  time  once  put  it  thus 
to  me  :  — 

"  At  school  we  are  taught  a  little  botany,  and 
a  little  physiology,  and  a  little  chemistry,  and  a 
little  natural  philosophy ;  a  little  of  metaphysics, 
and  a  little  of  morals,  and  a  little  of  history;  a 


WHAT    CAREER?  209 

little  Latin,  a  little  French,  a  little  Italian,  a 
little  German  and  Greek;  a  little  arithmetic, 
a  little  algebra,  a  little  geometry,  —  at  school 
we  are  taught  a  little  of  every  thing."  True 
enough ;  that  is  precisely  what  the  higher 
schools  are  for.  They  are  to  give  the  scholar 
a  taste.  Then  let  him  go  forward  if  he  will, 
where  he  will,  and  as  he  will.  Two  or  three  of 
the  last  years  of  school  have  not  been  badly 
spent,  if  they  have  given  such  a  series  of 
glimpses  round  the  panorama  that  you  can 
wisely  choose  which  direction  you  will  take  for 
your  own  journey. 

Now  you  have  the  luxury  of  making  your 
own  choice.  And  now  you  are  to  study,  —  not 
ten  things  at  a  time,  but  one  thing.  And  here 
is  one  of  the  places  where  your  taste,  your 
fancy,  —  what  you  like,  —  may  come  in.  The 
rule  for  gratifying  one's  tastes  in  life  is  exact 
here.  You  must  do  the  duty  next  your  hand, 
that  is  certain ;  but  of  ten  duties  next  your 
hand  you  are  to  choose  that  which  you  do  most 
happily,  which  suits  you  best,  or  for  which 
God  fitted  you.  So  long  as  you  were  at  school, 


210  WHAT    CAREER? 

it  was  your  duty  to  do  what  the  schoolmaster 
told  you  to  do.  Now,  of  this  realm  of  reading 
or  study,  it  is  your  duty  to  choose  first  that 
which  you  need  most  or  like  best.  And  now 
you  are  to  drop  the  effort  to  follow  up  ten  lines 
of  study  at  a  time.  Now  you  are  to  select,  for 
your  two  hours  daily,  some  one  out  of  the  ten. 

III.  And  you  are  to  choose  now,  no  longer  as 
one  playing  with  the  elements,  but  as  a  student 
who  is  going  to  do  this  thing  thoroughly. 

Do  not  ask  me  to  choose  for  you.  I  do  not 
know.  I  cannot  tell  either  what  your  tastes 
are  or  your  duties.  It  may  be  that  your  father 
is  an  importer  of  drugs,  that  it  is  interesting 
and  valuable  for  you  and  for  him  to  know  of  all 
manner  of  plants,  from  the  cedar  of  Lebanon  to 
the  hyssop  under  the  wall.  In  that  case,  I 
should  think  you  would  study  botany ;  and 
study  it,  not  satisfied  with  pulling  a  violet  to 
pieces  to  count  its  stamens,  but  so  to  study  it  as 
to  learn  the  laws  of  growth,  the  territorial  divi- 
sion of  genera  and  species,  the  relations  of  cli- 
mate to  growth,  and  again  of  vegetation  to 


WHAT    CAREER?  211 

climate.  I  should  think  you  would  like  to 
enter  into  the  heart  and  marrow  of  your  father's 
daily  duty,  and  of  what  you  are  to  hear  of 
every  day  of  your  life. 

Or  you  may  be  touched  by  all  this  centennial 
clamor,  Fourth  of  July  jubilation,  Old  South 
preservation  and  the  rest.  I  should  think  you 
would  like  to  know  something  of  the  real  his- 
tory of  your  country  beneath  the  school-book 
gloss ;  what  manner  of  men  Hancock  and  the 
Adamses,  Quincy,  Ward,  Warren,  and  the  other 
Massachusetts  heroes  really  were  ;  what  Jeffer- 
son, and  Paine,  and  Dickinson,  and  Schuyler, 
and  Livingston  were.  I  should  think  you 
would  like  to  study  a  hundred  years  ago  in  the 
writings  of  a  hundred  years  ago  ;  in  the  words, 
I  mean,  of  the  actors,  and  their  times. 

Or  in  this  daily  talk  of  politics  and  social 
matters  deeper  than  politics,  I  should  think 
that  a  boy  or  girl  of  seventeen  leaving  school, 
might  resolve  boldly  to  understand  some  of  the 
principles  at  the  bottom  of  questions  of  hard 
money  and  soft  money,  of  free  trade  and  pro- 
tection ;  of  grangers,  and  eight-hour  laws,  and 


212  WHAT    CAREER? 

trade-unions.  This  would  be  to  study  sociology 
and  political  economy. 

Or  I  can  understand  how  and  why  such  a 
boy  or  girl,  not  satisfied  with  the  smattering 
of  Latin,  or  German,  or  French  he  has  brought 
from  school,  should  resolve  to  go  beyond  the 
mere  elements  of  the  language  into  the  luxury 
of  the  literature.  Nor  can  any  moment  be  more 
delightful  than  the  moment  when  such  a  person 
at  last  launches  loose  from  the  ties  which  have 
bound  him  to  the  dictionary,  and  starts  over  the 
ocean  of  a  great  literature,  unfettered  and  free, 
conquering  a  new  world  by  the  magic  of  a  new 
language. 

Choose  for  yourself,  you  who  have  a  right  to 
choose  now ;  but  choose  one  thing  first,  and  do 
not  a^.d  the  second  till  you  are  certain  about 
the  one.  Do  not  let  John  persuade  you  to 
study  French,  and  Max  to  study  German,  and 
Henry  to  study  astronomy,  and  Walter  to  study 
chemistry.  Do  not  think  because  you  are  free 
you  can  do  every  thing.  You  are  to  do  one 
thing  at  a  time,  if  you  do  it  well.  One  thing 
well  done,  of  course  you  may  take  another. 


WHAT    CAREER?  213 

French  well  mastered,  take  your  French  to 
study  chemistry.  Chemical  analysis  well  un- 
derstood, use  it  in  studying  mineralogy.  The 
mathematics  of  mineralogy  well  compassed, 
use  it  in  your  studies  of  geology.  But  do  not 
be  trying  to  compass  all  these  things  at  once 
and  together. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  you  can  find  a  com- 
panion to  do  your  work  with  you,  two  of  you 
together  will  achieve  each  twice  as  much  as 
one  would  do  alone.  I  do  not  lay  much  stress 
on  the  teacher.  A  great  teacher,  who  will 
inspire  you,  is  certainly  a  great  blessing.  But 
wonders  can  be  done  in  the  way  of  study  by 
resolute  learners  who  have  no  teachers.  I  do 
hope,  for  each  of  you,  that  you  will  have  com- 
panionship and  sympathy. 

IV.  And,  now,  one  word  as  to  the  first  prac- 
tical difficulty  you  are  going  to  meet ;  or,  shall 
I  say,  the  first  enemy  in  your  way.  I  have  sup- 
posed that,  from  your  household  and  social 
duties,  you  girls  are  going  to  win  two  hours 
for  study  ;  and  that,  from  your  daily  work  at 


214  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  store,  you  boys  are  going  to  win  two. 
The  first  temptation  will  be  to  give  those  two 
hours  to  novel-reading,  to  the  magazines,  or  at 
the  least  to  the  newspapers  and  reviews,  on  the 
ground  that  they  are  improving.  What  are  you 
to  do  about  these  ? 

Well,  I  have  profited  too  much  by  novels  to 
say  hard  things  about  them.  I  recognize  abso- 
lutely the  truth  that  the  finest  work  of  the 
literature  of  our  time  has  taken  that  form.  I 
think  there  is  no  English  book  of  the  last  twenty 
years  which  has  a  better  chance  with  posterity 
than  George  Eliot's  novels.  But  when  I  see 
the  trash  which  boys  and  girls  have  in  their 
hands  in  the  street  cars ;  when  I  see  what  peo- 
ple buy  and  devour  in  travelling ;  when  I  see 
what  lies  about  on  people's  tables  and  seashore 
piazzas  and  mountain  hotels,  —  I  know  that 
I  must  speak  of  the  worst  temptation  for 
young  people  let  loose  from  school.  There  is 
no  such  enemy  to  firm  and  intelligent  study  as 
the  unrestricted  habit  of  devouring  novels.  Hold 
that  in  check,  therefore,  from  the  beginning. 
From  the  beginning,  determine  that  for  every 


WHAT    CAREER?  215 

hour  of  novel  reading  in  a  day,  you  will  read 
for  an  hour  something  of  some  worth  beside  the 
excitement  of  the  hour.  The  old  ladies  who 
sent  to  the  Dorchester  Public  Library  a  half 
century  ago,  used  to  send  for  "  a  sermon-book 
and  another  book,"  leaving  to  the  librarian  to 
choose.  I  wish  their  granddaughters  to-day, 
when  they  send  for  a  novel,  would  send  for 
"  another  book  "  as  well,  and  never  would  take 
novel  number  two  till  the  "other  book"  had 
been  well  and  wisely  digested.  The  analogy  of 
sugar-plums  is  perfect.  Woe  to  the  boy  or  girl 
who  eats  candy  all  the  time  ;  because  a  little 
sweetmeat  has  its  place  —  and  a  very  good 
place.  The  solid  meals  of  the  day  have  their 
place,  too.  And  this  is  all  that  I  will  say.  But 
I  forewarn  you  that,  when  at  New  Year  you  are 
looking  back  on  the  resolutions  about  your 
studies  which  you  have  not  kept,  the  failure 
will  be,  not  that  you  have  read  nothing,  but  that 
what  you  have  read  was  not  worth  the  reading. 

V.  Now  in  this  whole  affair  the  key  is  this : 
your  study  is  not  for  so  poor  an  object  as  to 


216  WHAT    CAREER? 

please  yourself ;  it  is,  in  the  end,  that  you  may 
please  those  you  love.  Yes,  I  have  a  great  re- 
spect for  the  girl  who  studied  chemistry  so  that 
she  might  the  better  make  the  sugar-plums  for 
her  younger  brothers  and  sisters.  I  think  her 
chemistry  was  God-favored ;  and  I  have  no 
doubt  that  the  spirit  in  which  she  conceived  her 
task  lifted  her  up  all  along  and  carried  her 
bravely  through.  To  be  enlarging  steadily  the 
mental  power  God  gave  when  you  were  born, 
that  you  may  carry  out  his  purpose  the  more 
steadily,  may  bring  this  world  nearer  heaven,  — 
that  is  your  object  when  you  choose  this  or  that 
direction  for  your  reading.  Or,  if  you  choose 
modestly  to  define  it  in  less  terms,  and  to  say 
you  would  be  a  better  companion  to  your  moth- 
er, or  would  serve  better  your  little  brothers  in 
their  studies,  I  will  accept  that  definition.  I 
only  say  that  that  means  the  same  thing.  If,  in 
the  schools,  the  poor  vision  of  culture  for  the  sake 
of  culture  has  been  haunting  you,  let  us  thank 
God  that  you  are  out  of  the  schools ;  and  let  us 
pray  to  him  that  life,  with  its  duties  and  dan- 
gers, may  lay  that  ghost,  and  lay  him  for  ever. 


WHAT    CAREER?  217 

/ 

I  hate  the  word  "  Culture,"  it  has  been  so  pa- 
raded  and  discussed,  —  the  theme  of  platforms 
and  of  lectures  that  meant  nothing.  It  has 
been  so  mixed  up  with  conceit  and  selfishness 
that  I  had  rather  you  told  me  any  friend  of 
mine  was  a  woman  of  pleasure,  or  a  woman  of 
fashion,  than  that  she  was  a  person  of  "cult- 
ure," as  that  phrase  is  commonly  applied.  An 
indignant  Western  writer  the  other  day  said 
that  when  the  Chinook  Indians  wished  to  stamp 
a  wordy  pretender  with  their  lowest  contempt ; 
when  they  wanted  to  speak  of  the  maximum  of 
brag  with  the  minimum  of  performance  ;  when, 
for  instance,  they  would  describe  a  young  chief 
who  had  never  been  on  the  war-trail,  and  had 
never  looted  an  enemy  in  the  face,  but  who 
was  perfect  in  his  war-paint,  carried  weapons 
of  the  most  elaborate  make,  and  wore  more 
feathers  than  any  warrior  of  them  all,  —  they 
described  this  man  by  the  name,  "Boston 
Cultus." 

Well,  you  and  I  know  what  that  satire 
means,  and  we  know  where  it  is  deserved.  It 
is  deserved  by  the  men  who  say  the  country  is 

10 


218  WHAT    CAREER? 

going  to  the  dogs,  and  who  never  give  a  vote  to 
save  it.  It  is  deserved  by  the  men  who  found 
fault  with  every  movement  of  the  war,  and 
never  carried  a  musket.  It  is  deserved  by  the 
men  who  say  the  sharpest  and  smartest  things 
against  universal  suffrage,  and  yet  never  lifted 
a  finger  to  welcome  an  emigrant,  nor  spent 
a  dollar  to  teach  a  negro.  It  is  deserved  by  the 
men  who  say  the  West  is  a  horde  of  barbarians, 
who  yet  never  travelled  farther  west  than  the 
Saratoga  race-courses,  nor  looked  face  to  face  at 
the  pure  democracy  of  a  healthy  Western  town. 
Such  satire  is  fairly  enough  deserved  in  its 
place  ;  but  it  has  no  voice  against  the  culture 
which  makes  of  Boston  a  university  ;  which  fills 
it  every  winter  with  young  men  and  women  from 
every  State  this  side  of  the  Pacific,  who  have 
come  here  to  study  music,  or  language,  or  paint- 
ing, or  philosophy,  or  physical  science,  in 
schools  which  offer  them  training  most  broadly 
and  most  cheaply.  And  for  you  and  me  the 
lesson,  not  of  such  easy  satire  only,  but  of 
every  living  word  of  a  loving  God,  is  that  what 
we  read  or  study  is  to  be  that  which  sooner  or 


WHAT    CAREER?  219 

later  wfll  make  us  better  soldiers  in  his  service. 
"Wide  is  the  sweep  of  that  service,  indeed.  It 
may  be  to  stand  faithful  among  the  faithless, 
as  Abdiel.  It  may  be  to  go  to  tell  the  message 
of  his  love  and  wisdom  to  the  ignorant,  like 
Gabriel.  It  may  be  to  be  a  guardian  of  the 
weak,  like  Raphael.  It  may  be  to  stand 
guard  at  the  gate  and  keep  away  disease  and 
pestilence,  hatred  and  malice,  from  those  we 
love,  to  detect  falsehood  by  its  own  ugliness, 
and  to  know  truth  of  our  own  nature,  like 
Ithuriel.  It  may  be  to  be  "  God's  eyes,  that 
run  through  all  the  heavens,  or  down  to  the 
earth  bear  his  swift  errands,"  as  was  the  service 
of  Uriel.  It  may  be  to  crush  and  destroy  his 
enemies,  as  was  the  work  of  Michael.  Or  it  may 
be  that  we  are  of  that  chorus  and  company  of 
all  saints  who  also  serve  although  they  stand  and 
wait.  Be  it  where  he  will,  we  are  in  his  service. 
Choose  what  line  we  will,  we  choose  to  build 
up  his  kingdom.  We  are  on  the  side  of  God, 
and  throw  in  our  lot  and  our  endeavor  with  the 
progress  and  purity  of  his  world.  Do  not  let 
any  sceptic  pull  you  down  from  that  high  ambi- 


220  WHAT    CAREER? 

tion.  Do  not  let  any  sneer  make  you  afraid  to 
assert  a  claim  so  grand.  Your  voice,  your  pen, 
your  kindness,  your  patience,  your  sympathy, 
and  your  help,  shall  be  more  able  and  more  — 
as  you  rightly  use  and  train  these  talents  which 
are  his  gift  —  to  open  blind  eyes  and  deaf  ears, 
to  make  homes  happy,  and  to  make  deserts 
smile.  You  live  for  him  and  to  his  glory. 


WHAT    CAREER?  221 

IX. 

THE   TRAINING  OF  MEN. 

"\  T  7HEN  I  wag  little  more  than  a  boy,  I  was 
presented  to  Mr.  John  Tyler,  then  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  and  had  the  advan- 
tage of  a  few  minutes'  conversation  with  him. 
He  advised  me  as  to  my  route  in  a  journey  I 
proposed  into  Virginia.  He  said  I  should  not 
find  the  aspect  of  a  large  population,  to  which 
I  was  used  in  Massachusetts,  —  that  their  pecu- 
liar institutions  withdrew  the  laboring  people 
and  their  homes  to  a  distance  from  the  high- 
ways. "  Indeed,"  said  he,  "  you  will  not  see  so 
much  of  the  evidences  of  material  wealth  in  any 
part  of  Virginia.  But,  if  you  will  go  into  the 
valley  of  the  James1  River,  you  will  see  the 
great  turning-places  of  our  history.  You  will 
see  Jamestown,  where  American  history  began  ; 
you  will  see  Yorktown,  where  colonial  history 
ended ;  you  will  see  the  birth-place  or  the  resi- 

1  Pronounced  "  Jeems,"  by  Old  Virginia. 


222  WHAT    CAREER? 

dence  of  Patrick  Henry,  of  Washington,  of  Jef- 
ferson, and  of  Madison.  In  such  associations 
as  these,  you  will  be  less  curious  about  traces  of 
physical  prosperity." 

I  Ifien.  learned,  boy  as  I  was,  a  lesson  which  I 
have  never  forgotten.  For  President  Tyler  was 
supposed  to  be  susceptible  to  compliment,  and  I 
was  young  enough  to  be  in  the  mood  to  humor 
him.  I  bent  forward  to  quote  the  beautiful  lines 
by  which  Mrs.  Barbauld  truly  describes  the  great- 
ness of  England. 

I  was  on  the  point  of  saying,  — 

"  Man  is  the  nobler  growth  your  realms  supply," 

when  it  occurred  to  me,  just  in  time,  that  at  that 
moment  the  principal  trade  of  Virginia  was  the 
exportation  of  men  to  the  Louisiana  sugar  plan- 
tations. She  did  not  really  care  quite  so  much, 
just  then,  for  Washington  or  for  Jefferson,  as  for 
the  growth  of  men  for  other  purposes.  The 
men  who  were  brought  up  on  her  corn  were  sold 
as  soon  as  they  were  men  for  the  labor  of  Louisi- 
ana. The  quotation,  therefore, — 

"  Man  is  the  nobler  growth  your  realms  supply," 


WHAT    CAREER?  223 

was  fatally  and  sadly  true,  in  a  sense  other  than 
Mrs.  Barbauld's ;  and,  at  the  same  moment,  it 
was  a  fatal  exposition  of  the  cause  of  that  pov- 
erty in  resources  which  the  President  was  ac- 
knowledging, I  bit  my  lip,  said  nothing,  which 
is  always  wise,  and  the  President  passed  on  to 
some  other  views  of  Virginian  greatness.  I 
meanwhile  had  learned,  so  that  I  have  remem- 
bered it  since,  the  lesson  of  the  folly  and  vanity 
of  compliment. 

That  was  thirty-three  years  ago,  —  a  third  of 
a  century  ago.  In  that  time,  I  have  travelled 
often  in  Virginia,  and  every  time  when  I  have 
gone  there,  I  have  come  home  haunted  with  the 
remembrance  of  this  first  conversation  I  ever  had 
with  a  President  of  the  United  States;  and  with 
the  lesson  of  the  value  of  men  in  the  world, 
which,  though  neither  of  us  meant  it,  was  con- 
veyed in  it.  I  have  now  come  home  from 
Louisiana  and  Texas,  from  the  deserts  of  the 
Indian  Territory  and  Kansas,  saying  just  the 
same  thing, — 

"  Man  is  the  nobler  growth  our  realms  supply ; " 

and  convinced  again,  and  more  convinced  than 


224  WHAT    CAREER? 

ever,  that  all  schemes  of  reconstruction  are  hope- 
less, all  victories  of  armies  idle,  all  natural  lux- 
ury of  climate  a  snare,  and  all  mineral  wealth 
a  delusion,  unless  you  have  men  to  use  the  vic- 
tories, men  to  enforce  the  laws,  men  to  enjoy  the 
climate,  men  to  subdue  the  earth.  Again  I 
learn  the  eternal  lesson  of  the  vanity  of  things, 
where  there  is  no  master  spirit  to  control  things. 
It  is  the  lesson  of  the  nothingness  of  Nature, 
unless  the  child  of  God  —  unless  man  —  takes 
Nature  in  hand  to  tame  her. 

One  sits  at  home  in  our  dismal  climate,  one 
sees  the  hand-to-mouth  work  of  our  farming,  — 
crops  of  granite  and  of  ice  for  its  only  exports, 
—  and  one  sighs  for  richer  fields  and  warmer 
skies.  Then  one  travels  to  see  those  fields  and 
to  enjoy  those  skies ;  and  one  hears  the  word 
that  God  said  to  Adam  in  the  beginning,  that 
he  bade  him  subdue  the  earth.  One  learns  that 
the  earth  is  nothing  unless  you  have  the  men ; 
and  one  asks  how  and  when  and  where  the 
noblest  man  —  the  child  of  God  most  godly  —  is 
to  be  found  and  is  to  be  trained. 

When  one  finds  that,  he  finds  how  the  wilder- 


WHAT    CAREER?  225 

ness  ft  to  be  vanquished  and  the  desert  blossom 
with  the  rose.  He  sees,  in  fact,  what  Isaiah 
saw  in  prophetic  rapture,  that  the  desert  re- 
joices and  the  wilderness  is  glad,  only  when 
they  see  the  coming  of  the  true  Son  of  Man. 

I.  This  is,  of  course,  true,  though  you  speak 
of  dollars  and  cents,  of  mere  material  wealth. 
I  need  not  show  that  land  alone  is  not  worth  a 
penny, — not  though  it  were  underlaid  with  gold, 
not  though  it  bore  corn  and  olive  and  vine,  — 
until  you  can  put  men  upon  it  to  take  its  treas- 
ure in  hand.  True,  the  Old  World  people,  when 
they  come  over  here,  forget  this,  land  at  home 
seems  so  precious.  They  wonder  how  we  can 
afford  to  give  away  homesteads  to  settlers,  if 
they  will  only  please  to  take  them.  The  lesson 
has  been  a  lesson  which  our  Southern  friends 
have  found  it  hard  to  learn,  —  that  the  poorest 
land,  if  it  had  a  thousand  people  to  the  square 
mile,  was  worth  a  thousand  times  as  much  as 
one  of  their  plantation  baronies  without  inhabi- 
tants. It  is  rather  a  curious  feature  of  the  early 
colonization  of  all  our  States,  that  the  unwel- 
10* 


226  WHAT    CAREER? 

come  lesson  had  to  be  taught  to  all  capitalists 
that  land  alone  is  as  valueless  as  water  alone,  — 
an  acre  of  desert  land  as  an  acre  of  desert  water. 
It  took  long  to  persuade  an  earl  or  a  duke,  to 
whom  an  English  king  had  given  a  principality 
as  large  on  the  map  as  England,  that  really  his 
master  had  given  him  nothing.  It  took  long  to 
persuade  the  Virginia  Company,  to  whom  King 
James  gave  half  a  continent,  and  the  Plymouth 
Company,  to  whom  he  gave  the  other  half,  that 
in  truth  he  had  given  them  nothing.  A  gen- 
eration, more  or  less,  taught  them,  as  the  same 
length  of  time  taught  the  barons  and  the  dukes, 
generally  at  some  cost,  that  they  would  be  wise 
to  part,  when  they  could,  from  the  royal  gift,  and 
bestow  it  on  any  one  who  would  take  it.  Crozat 
and  Law  learned  the  same  lesson  in  Louisiana. 
With  such  experience,  whoever  looks  an  instant 
at  the  causes  of  wealth  sees  why  this  is  so. 
Robinson  Crusoe's  lump  of  gold  had  no  value, 
because  on  his  island  there  were  no  men  who 
had  need  of  gold.  And  so  the  worth  of  any 
spot  on  the  world's  surface  in  the  market  de- 
pends on  its  ease  of  access,  —  on  the  use,  that  is, 


WHAT    CAREER?  227 

which  can  be  made  of  it  in  the  enterprises  of 
men. 

II.  That  is  mere  matter  of  the  exchange. 
What  interests  us  in  our  purposes  is  the  quality 
of  the  men  who  hold  any  territory.  How  much 
of  manliness  is  there  in  them  ?  Or,  speaking 
more  simply,  how  godly  are  these  men  ?  How 
much  is  there  in  them  of  the  spirit  of  the  creat- 
ing God  ?  Tossed  on  different  surges  of  the 
same  ocean,  at  the  same  moment  of  the  year 
1620,  were  two  ships  working  westward, — one 
to  Virginia  and  one  to  New  England.  They 
met  the  same  gales ;  they  rejoiced  in  the  same 
east  winds  ;  they  reached  their  harbors  nearly 
at  the  same  time;  a  hundred  people  in  each 
perhaps.  Yes,  but  what  is  the  quality  of  these 
men?  How  much  muscle?  how  much  brain? 
how  much  soul  ?  To  ask  the  last  question  is  to 
ask,  How  much  of  God  is  there  ?  how  near  to 
God  are  they  ?  how  high  in  the  grade  of  men  ? 

The  vessel  on  the  Southern  voyage  has  a 
hundred  negroes  from  the  Guinea  coast.  They 
have  been  stolen  by  Dutch  adventurers.  They 


228  WHAT    CAREER? 

are  brought  to  do  field-labor  beneath  the  lash  on 
this  James  River.  They  have  learned  nothing  ; 
they  know  nothing.  As  far  as  you  can  ever  say 
it  of  men,  they  believe  nothing,  remember  noth- 
ing, and  hope  for  nothing.  They  hardly  know 
there  was  a  past.  They  hardly  look  forward  to 
a  future.  The  other  vessel,  the  "Mayflower," 
has  a  hundred  English  Independents,  culled 
from  the  best  wheat  of  England,  and  trained 
for  twelve  years  in  the  midst  of  the  best  wisdom 
of  Holland.  They  are  men  who  for  an  idea 
have  left  home.  For  right  and  for  God  they 
have  come  into  the  wilderness.  They  are  men 
who  live  for  faith,  for  hope,  and  for  love.  I 
need  not  make  any  calculation  of  the  worth  of 
these  two  cargoes.  I  would  leave  it  to  any  man 
who  is  used  to  the  work  of  colonization.  I  will 
take  the  most  cold-blooded  estimate  of  any  bro- 
ker of  land.  Which  will  be  worth  the  most  in 
the  market,  when  ten  years  have  gone  by,  —  the 
sands  of  Plymouth,  with  what  are  left  of  the  hun- 
dred God-fearing  men  and  women,  or  the  rich 
bottom-land  of  Virginia,  beneath  the  compelled 
labor  of  what  are  left  of  the  hundred  faithless 
slaves  ? 


WHAT    CAREER?  229 

There  is  a  distinction,  as  we  see  at  the  very- 
outset,  in  the  quality  of  men. 

III.  So  we  come  back  to  our  real  question, 
How  are  such  godly  men  to  be  found  and 
trained,  —  how,  when,  and  where  ?  I  have  less 
and  less  faith  in  that  convenient  modern  theory 
which  makes  out  the  great  gifts  of  godli- 
ness and  manliness  to  be  the  native  fruits  of 
certain  climates,  or  of  particular  physical  geo- 
graphy. I  do  not  see  that  the  facts  sustain  the 
theory.  For,  in  truth,  very  diverse  facts  are 
called  upon,  as  the  theory  happens  to  require. 
If  the  inquiry  is  about  Peter  the  Great,  who 
raised  a  barbarous  State  to  be  a  first-rate  power, 
you  are  told  that  northern  climates  develop 
strong  characters,  and  make  royal  men.  But  if 
the  royal  man,  who  has  made  a  small  State  into 
a  great  one,  happens  to  be  Solomon  in  Palestine 
or  Pericles  in  Athens,  you  are  told  that  the  lux- 
ury of  the  climate  of  the  Mediterranean  gave 
fine  chance  for  exquisite  physical  development, 
and  for  the  mental  and  moral  gifts  which  to 
physical  development  belong.  We  in  New  Eng- 


230  WHAT    CAREER? 

land  hear  a  good  deal  of  the  simple  and  pure 
virtues  of  the  Northern  races,  because  we  hap- 
pen to  belong  to  those  races,  and  do  not  dislike 
to  paint  our  own  pictures.  Of  course,  our  posi- 
tion saves  us  from  many  temptations ;  but  what 
is  the  worth  of  virtue  which  has  never  been 
tempted  ?  When  I  think  of  such  men  as  Tous- 
saint,  born  in  San  Domingo  ;  as  Napoleon,  born 
in  Corsica ;  as  Washington,  born  in  Virginia  ;  as 
Dante,  born  in  Florence  ;  as  Alfred,  born  in  Eng- 
land ;  as  Epictetus,  born  in  Phrygia ;  as  Socrates, 
born  in  Athens ;  as  David,  born  in  Bethlehem, 
— I  see  that  moral  goodness  or  mental  greatness 
belongs  to  no  one  climate  or  set  of  circumstances 
more  than  another.  And,  if  you  speak  of  spe- 
cial gifts,  no  man  who  has  seen  Mr.  Webster 
tame  an  unwilling  audience  and  carry  it  along 
with  him,  and  has  read  how  Demosthenes  did 
the  same  thing  with  the  mob  of  Athens,  will 
believe  that  the  gift  of  eloquence  is  a  special 
gift,  either  of  the  mountains  of  New  Hampshire 
or  of  the  ripples  of  the  waves  of  the  ^Egean 
shore. 

How,  when,  and  where,  then,  are  we  to  find 


WHAT    CAREER?  231 

the  most  manly  men,  which  is  to  say,  the  most 
godly  ?  We  must  not  look  in  a  particular  soil 
for  them,  as  if  they  were  ground-nuts  or  turnips, 
nor  along  a  particular  isothermal  line,  as  if  they 
-were  palm-trees  or  pines.  Jesus  Christ  struck 
the  key-note  of  the  answer,  when  he  reversed 
all  superficial  speculations  by  saying,  "  The  last 
shall  be  first ; "  "  He  that  is  least  among  you 
shall  be  greatest ;  "  "  He  that  humbleth  himself 
shall  be  exalted ;  "  "  He  that  is  least  in  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  shall  be  greater  than  the  prophet 
who  has  the  most  popular  surrounding,  or  than 
the  ascetic  whose  fasting  is  most  severe."  In 
all  such  announcements,  sometimes  abruptly 
paradoxical  in  form,  the  central  truth  is  pro- 
claimed that  manliness  is  a  moral  quality, — that 
it  belongs  to  spirit  and  the  empire  of  spirit.  It 
is  not  a  matter  of  mental  fibre  or  physical  fibre. 
It  is  not  to  be  contracted  for,  as  you  contract  for 
the  staple  of  the  wool  of  a  sheep,  for  the  flesh 
on  the  thigh  of  an  ox,  for  the  speed  or  bottom 
of  a  horse,  when  you  go  to  the  breeder  of  those 
animals  to  tell  him  what  you  want,  or  when  he 
undertakes  to  supply  you.  "  All  these  things 


232  WHAT    CAREER? 

ye   should  have  done,  but  not  have   left  the 
others  undone." 

The  physiological  discoveries  of  recent  times 
have  done  a  good  deal  to  help  us  in  these  ques- 
tions. At  the  least,  they  have  confirmed  the  best 
instructions  of  the  prophets  and  other  spiritual 
teachers,  whose  boldest  statements  are  now  con- 
firmed even  by  the  anatomists.  I  said  this  was 
not  a  matter  of  mental  fibre  or  physical  fibre. 
Now,  it  is  not  'long  since  the  impression  was 
very  widely  diffused,  that  mental  training  had 
the  most  intimate  relation  with  moral  force. 
People  really  thought  that  you  could  argue  or 
prove  your  way  into  heaven.  Because  we  do 
not  see  the  mind,  people  have  been  very  fond  of 
speaking  as  if  mere  mental  processes,  —  such  as 
memory,  imagination,  ,and  reasoning,  —  were  in 
themselves  somehow  elements  of  original  power 
and  sources  of  real  life.  People  have  talked  as 
if  Lord  Byron  or  La  Place  or  Goethe  or  Napo- 
leon, because  of  their  wonderful  mental  faculty, 
had  any  more  original  power,  any  more  chance 
for  moral  insight  and  moral  victory,  any  more 
sway  of  circumstance.  No  one  would  have 


WHAT    CAREER?  233 

said  this  of  a  giant,  or  a  man  of  strong  muscle, 
—  of  Milo  of  Crotona,  or  of  some  seven-foot 
Kentuckian.  But  men  did  say  it  of  mental 
giants  and  persons  of  strong  reasoning  faculty. 
They  spoke  as  if  such  brilliant  mental  marvels 
had  a  better  chance  of  knowing  God  and  doing 
his  will  than  some  stupid  old  black  man,  who 
could  neither  read  nor  write  nor  reckon.  All 
this  folly  ought  to  be  set  aside  by  recent  dis- 
coveries as  to  the  nature  of  mere  mental  effort. 
For  it  proves  now  that  an  effort  of  memory  or 
a  train  of  argument  takes  up  bodily  fibre,  tires 
out  and  wears  down  the  body  just  as  much  as 
running  a  race  does,  or  striking  at  a  ball.  It  is 
made  almost  certain,  from  mere  physical  obser- 
vations, that  the  merely  intellectual  efforts  be- 
long with  feats  of  bodily  strength.  The  mere 
mind  and  the  mere  body  are  to  be  ranked 
together. 

All  this  observation  makes  simpler  and  more 
interesting  all  the  set  of  studies,  which  show 
how  the  man  himself,  the  living  soul,  is  to  con- 
trol the  mind  and  to  control  the  body.  The 
theory  of  the  Dark  Ages  and  of  the  Fathers  of 


234  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  Reformation  is  exploded,  which  taught  that 
the  man  would  gain  vital  power  if  he  only 
understood  about  the  Vicarious  Atonement,  or 
if  he  committed  to  memory  a  theory  of  the  Fall 
of  Man,  or  if  he  said  that  he  believed  one  or 
another  theory  of  the  Trinity.  The  training 
of  the  mind  and  the  training  of  the  body  must 
henceforth  be  regarded  as  on  the  same  plane. 
And  all  men  who  believe  there  is  a  soul,  espe- 
cially all  who  believe  that  this  soul  survives  the 
body,  will  see  that  the  man  gains  in  strength  in 
proportion  as  the  soul  of  man  subdues  body  and 
mind  together.  And  it  is  made  certain,  for  such 
questions  as  we  are  trying  to  solve,  that  if  we 
only  have  manhood  enough  in  the  men  and 
womanhood  enough  in  the  women,  they  will 
control  body  and  mind,  whatever  climate  or  soil, 
latitude  or  longitude.  They  will  become  mon- 
archs  even  of  the  wilderness,  and  will  compel  it 
to  blossom. 

Force  inheres  in  moral  quality.  Mind  and 
body  are  its  tools,  and  nothing  more.  Now, 
because  moral  quality,  and  the  finest  moral 
quality,  may  appear  anywhere  among  the  chil- 


WHAT    CAREER?  235 

dren  of  God,  —  may  appear  in  "  Uncle  Tom,"  in 
his  cabin  ;  in  Jeanne  of  Orleans,  in  her  peasant's 
hut ;  in  Grace  Darling,  on  the  lonely  storm-beat 
shore,  —  you  must  arrange  the  steps  of  promo- 
tion for  everybody,  you  must  arrange  your  uni- 
versal training  for  everybody,  keep  watch  and 
ward  that  every  child  of  God  may  have  a  chance 
as  good  as  the  best.  When  the  lily  of  the  field 
germinates,  there  must  be  no  heavy  slate-stone 
over  its  head  to  throw  it  back  into  darkness  for 
ever,  while  tares  and  whiteweed  are  flaunting 
all  around  in  sunlight  and  air,  and  scattering 
their  pestilent  seeds  for  the  destruction  of  future 
harvests.  This  is  the  distinct  and  central  rule 
of  Christian  civilization.  Give  every  child  of 
God  the  best  that  you  can  give  in  the  way  of 
training ;  let  him  share  equally  with  all  the  oth- 
ers. No  matter  if  he  come  rushing  in  at  the 
eleventh  hour.  If  he  have  neglected,  or  if  oth- 
ers of  his  race  have  neglected,  all  the  golden 
opportunities  of  dawn  or  glorious  noon,  still,  for 
all  that,  do  you,  who  are  only  stewards  of  God's 
bounty,  give  him  the  same  penny  that  you  give 
to  those  who  have  wrought  with  you  all  day. 


236  WHAT    CAREER? 

For  he  is  God's  child  as  well  as  they,  and  so  has 
the  unstinted,  untaxed,  uncompared  treasure 
of  the  very  fulness  of  God's  love.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  that  parable. 

And  in  this  fundamental  axiom  of  the  life  of 
a  republic,  that  it  must  keep  open  to  the  top 
every  line  of  promotion,  is  that  remark  confuted 
which  we  sometimes  hear  in  whispers,  that  pop- 
ular education  is  to  be  limited  to  the  elements 
of  learning  only.  People  say  in  whispers  what 
they  are  not  so  apt  to  say  when  they  are  candi- 
dates, that  the  State  should  only  pay  for  reading, 
writing,  and  arithmetic.  It  should  not  pay,  they 
say,  for  Greek  and  Latin,  for  history,  and  a 
knowledge  of  fine  art,  because  these  are  for  the 
few  who  can  pay  for  them,  while  the  elements 
only  are  for  all.  This  heresy  starts  on  the  mis- 
take that  it  is  for  their  own  good  only  that  the 
State  trains  them.  In  truth,  the  State  trains 
them  for  her  own  good,  first  of  all.  Then  the 
heresy  supposes  that  the  few  who  can  pay  for  the 
higher  training  are  the  few  who  need  it.  But 
no  man  can  tell  where  or  in  what  class  of  society 
Jenny  Lind  is  to  be  born,  or  Florence  Nightin- 


WHAT    CAREER?  237 

gale,  or  Robert  Fulton,  or  Abraham  Lincoln ;  and 
we  must  not  risk  the  loss  of  any  one  who  would 
help  the  world  by  withholding  at  the  right  time 
the  right  culture.  For  the  State's  sake,  we  must 
offer  it  open-handed  to  them  all. 

But  there  need  be  no  real  danger  from  this 
heresy,  nor  from  any  of  the  short-sighted  here- 
sies of  the  old  schools  of  politics,  which  were 
bred  in  castes  or  classes.  If  we  can  bear  in 
mind  always  that  the  whole  object  of  the  State, 
—  of  constitutions  of  government,  of  systems 
of  education,  —  is  to  make  men  and  women  who 
deserve  those  names,  all  our  questions  will  be 
answered  easily.  All  law,  all  policies,  must  be 
subordinated  to  this  training  of  the  citizen. 
All  social  order  and  all  its  machinery  must  serve 
the  same  great  aim.  For  instance,  fine  art,  the 
picture-gallery,  the  opera  and  the  theatre,  sys- 
tems of  trade,  tariffs,  and  commercial  regula- 
tions, school  systems  and  college  systems,  —  all 
these  at  bottom  must  be  administered  and  must 
be  planned  so  that  you  may  gain  the  highest  pos- 
sible quality  of  manhood  and  of  womanhood  in 
all  your  citizens.  I  read  every  day  discussions 


238  WHAT    CAREER? 

of  free  trade  and  tariffs  which  make  me  sick. 
People  argue  as  if  the  great  object  of  our  race 
were  to  make  iron  cheaper,  or  cotton  cloth,  or 
kerseys.  You  would  think  Magna  Charta  and 
the  Bill  of  Rights  and  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, the  American  Revolution  and  the 
Civil  War,  had  all  been  ordered  that  the  price 
of  calicoes  might  be  low  in  comparison  with  the 
price  of  gold.  Now,  in  truth,  these  great  eras 
of  human  society,  these  martyr  struggles  of 
brave  men,  have  had  objects  and  results  wor- 
thy of  martyrdom.  The  State  exists,  and  its 
methods  are  improved,  with  the  one  design, 
which  is  God's  own  design,  of  making  manly 
men  and  womanly  women.  A  true  State  adopts 
that  system  of  revenue  and  protection  which 
best  develops  and  best  educates  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  born  within  her  border. 

So  I  hear  the  new  Art  Education  of  England 
praised,  which  gives  to  every  boy  who  will  op- 
portunity to  use  rule,  crayon,  pencil,  brush,  and 
graver.  I  praise  it.  I  hope  we  may  see  it  here. 
But  it  is  not  because  I  care  so  much  for  the  pat- 
terns of  our  calicoes  or  our  paper-hangings.  It 


WHAT    CAREER?  239 

is  because,  for  the  child  of  God  born  yesterday 
in  a  hovel,  I  would  have  ready  the  best  possible 
training  for  his  best  development ;  that  his  soul 
and  heart,  his  conscience  and  affections,  the  part 
of  him  which  is  infinite  and  immortal,  may  use 
the  best  tools  child  of  God  can  use,  and  win  the 
highest  victory  child  of  God  can  win :  for  this 
the  State  lays  her  designs. 

Your  whole  political  or  social  problem  of  re- 
construction becomes  thus  a  problem  of  moral 
education.  That  the  land  just  now  redeemed 
—  a  land  which,  though  redeemed,  is  still  a  wil- 
derness — may  blossom  with  the  rose.  How 
shall  that  be  ?  Never,  but  around  the  homes  of 
womanly  women  ;  never,  but  beneath  the  spade- 
blows  of  manly  men. 

In  the  Old  World,  the  Church  timidly  obeys 
the  direction  of  the  State  in  such  affairs.  It 
educates  only  a  few  choir-boys  in  Rome,  because 
the  Church  needs  no  wider  education.  In  other 
countries  it  goes  further,  as  the  temporal  ruler 
may  permit.  But  everywhere,  outside  of  Switz- 
erland, the  reign  of  classes  must  be  maintained 
and  taught,  as  the  English  Prayer-book  says, 


240  WHAT    CAREER? 

"  To  do  my  duty  in  that  state  of  life  unto  which 
it  shall  please  God  to  call  me."  It  is  our  higher 
blessing  that  with  us  the  Church  owns  no  earthly 
master.  In  the  great  work  of  bringing  all  to  the 
stature  of  a  perfect  man,  we  know  no  let  or  hin- 
drance. In  that  great  work,  where  Christ  leads 
the  way,  of  making  men  and  women  to  be  more 
like  God,  we  may  follow  freely.  We  call  the 
halt,  the  blind,  the  deaf,  and  the  dumb.  We 
will  teach  them  all,  encourage  them  all,  uplift 
them  all.  We  will  inspire  them  all,  so  that  no 
man  shall  be  content  with  the  state  of-  life  he  is 
in  to-day,  but  each  man  shall  pray  and  strive  to 
find  himself  nearer  God  to-morrow.  We  must 
consecrate  them  all,  that  no  man  shall  say  that 
any  thing  he  has  is  his  own,  but  rather  that  each 
man  shall  hold  as  a  trustee  for  the  highest  good 
of  all.  The  State  will  never  be  satisfied  with 
any  thing  she  has  attained.  She  will  always 
forget  the  thing  that  is  behind ;  and,  always 
looking  forward  for  worship  more  free,  for  com- 
munion more  intimate,  and  for  faith  more  firm, 
she  will  lift  men  to  higher  duty  and  success 
more  abundant.  Such  men  are  each  worth  a 


WHAT    CAREER?  241 

thousand  Persian  legionaries,  worth  a  thousand 
frightened  slaves.  Those  men  live  in  the  life 
of  God.  They  breathe  the  spirit  of  God.  They 
work  with  the  help  of  God,  beneath  God's  own 
direction.  It  is  in  answer  to  the  prayers  of 
women  thus  trained,  and  to  the  work  of  men 
thus  inspired,  that  deserts,  but  just  now  dis- 
covered, become  prosperous  commonwealths,  — 
that  the  prairie  of  yesterday  is  the  harvest-field 
of  to-day.  Ah  !  more  than  this :  it  will  be  when 
such  men  and  such  women  control  it,  that  the 
land  just  -now  wasted  by  slavery,  and  trodden 
down,  fulfils  the  promises  which  God  Almighty 
seemed  to  write  on  it  in  its  soil  and  climate  in 
the  very  beginning. 

And  not  till  then ! 

It  is  rather  more  than  half  a  century  since 
this  country,  without  knowing  it,  drifted  into 
the  great  experiment  of  universal  suffrage.  The 
men  of  the  American  Revolution  hardly  dreamed 
of  so  bold  a  theory.  They  gave  the  suffrage 
only  to  those  who  had  some  permanent  interest 
in  the  land.  It  was  afterwards,  by  steps  but 
little  thought  of,  that  the  supreme  power  was 
11 


242  WHAT    CAREER? 

given  in  equal  shares  to  each  man  who  lived 
under  our  sky.  So  soon  as  the  country  knew 
what  it  had  done,  the  shrewd  good  sense  of  the 
country  compelled  the  better  school-education 
of  the  people,  —  of  all  the  people.  On  that 
wave  we  have  been  swimming  for  fifty  years.  I 
do  not  say  nor  think  that  we  have  yet  done  the 
best  we  shall  do  in  the  line  of  mental  education. 
But  I  hope  we  are  learning  a  better  lesson  yet. 
I  hope  we  are  learning  that  what  the  people 
must  have,  if  the  land  is  to  live,  is  moral  educa- 
tion as  the  basis  and  ruling  power  of  the  whole. 
We  must  resolve  on  manhood  and  on  woman- 
hood fit  to  use  these  athletic  bodies  and  to 
direct  these  cultivated  minds.  The  country 
must  learn  that  this  great  word,  "  Education," 
means  a  great  deal  more  than  the  training  of 
men's  wits.  It  means  a  great  deal  more  than 
the  training  of  their  muscles.  It  means  the 
training  of  the  soul  of  man.  Unless  he  is  more 
than  an  athlete,  unless  he  is  more  than  a  reader, 
writer,  or  reckoner,  he  is  not  fit  to  be  trusted 
with  the  use  of  such  instruments  as  body  or 
mind.  And  the  State  will  perish  if  it  rely  on 
his  suffrage,  or  that  of  men  like  him. 


WHAT    CAREER?  243 

For  this  moral  training  the  Church,  in  its 
thousand  organizations,  is  of  course  responsible. 
Yet  the  cool  good  sense  of  the  people  has  been 
right  in  its  demand  that  the  ordained  officers  of 
the  Church  —  meaning  its  formal  functionaries 

—  shall  not  interfere  in   the   day-schools,   lest 
they   carry  there   their   professional   jealousies 
and  bigotries:  so  much  more  religious,  at  the 
bottom,  is  the  whole  people,  than  any  one  clan 
or  section  is  apt  to  be.     This  exclusion,  how- 
ever, does  not  mean  that  the  work  of  a  common 
school,  though  it   were   a   school   for  reading, 
writing,  and  arithmetic,  shall  not,  first,  last,  and 
always — top,  bottom,  and  middle  —  be  devoted 
to  making  the  boys  manly  and  the  girls  womanly, 

—  devoted  all  through  to  their  moral  training. 
It  is  the  wisdom  from  on  high  which  the  land 
is  after,  and  must  have,  if  it  is  to  be  a  nation. 
This  wisdom  is  first  pure,  then  peaceable  and 
gentle ;  it  is  full  of  mercy  and  good  fruits ;  it 
is   without   partiality  and  without    hypocrisy. 
No  wisdom  is  good  for  any  thing  which  does 
not  include  this  wisdom.     And  the  schools  and 
colleges  are  not  worth  even  what  the  men  are 


244  WHAT    CAREER? 

paid  who  sweep  their  floors,  if  they  do  not 
inculcate  this  wisdom  through  and  through. 
The  old  statement  about  Harvard  College — if 
it  be  still  true,  as  I  hope  it  is,  in  the  profoundest 
sense  of  the  words  —  is  founded  on  a  complete 
appreciation  of  what  a  college  is  for.  "It  is 
not  so  much,"  men  used  to  say  half  a  century 
ago,  "  what  things  the  college  teaches,  or  what 
it  does  not  teach.  It  is  that  it  takes  in  every 
year  fifty  cubs,  and  sends  out  every  year  fifty 
gentlemen."  If  the  gentleman  be  a  gentleman 
according  to  St.  James's  standard,  or  St.  Paul's, 
one  could  have  no  higher  description  of  the 
work  of  a  college. 

But  I  should  have  very  little  hope  for  the 
real  moral  education  of  the  land,  if  I  supposed 
it  must  be  left  on  the  chances  of  the  schools  of 
the  land.  When,  with  their  eyes  open,  our 
fathers  took  the  government  of  America  out  of 
the  hands  of  the  House  of  Brunswick,  and  took 
it  on  themselves,  they  really  pledged  themselves 
to  God  Almighty  that  the  people  of  this  land 
should,  in  every  public  ordinance  and  organiza- 
tion, be  trained  in  their  eternal  life,  —  trained 


WHAT    CAREER?  245 

to  be  kings  and  priests,  as  the  Bible  squarely 
puts  it.  In  point  of  fact,  a  high-toned  town 
meeting  or  ward  meeting,  under  the  true  gov- 
ernment of  a  republic,  is  a  school  for  the  higher 
life,  in  which  every  day-laborer,  sweating  from 
the  forge  or  dirty  from  the  spade,  may  be  lifted 
to  higher  life  and  conscientious  duty.  The 
theatre,  when  you  can  have  stockholders  or 
other  owners  who  had  rather  die  than  that  the 
State  should  suffer  harm,  may  be  made,  often  is 
made,  a  nurse  for  morals  and  the  eternal  life, 
whose  successes  any  single  church  may  envy. 
A  high-toned  journal,  which  would  rather  sink 
with  its  colors  flying  than  wound  a  boy's  purity, 
or  puzzle  an  innocent  girl  by  a  coarse  word,  is 
one  of  the  voices  which,  if  only  by  its  steady 
iteration,  finds  a  way  which  no  oracle  could 
command.  Then  there  are  such  lessons  as 
those  of  Starr  King,  Orville  Dewey,  Wendell 
Phillips,  and  Waldo  Emerson,  in  the  lecture- 
room.  A  thousand  people  do  not  go  to  their 
homes  after  they  have  been  hushed  and  en- 
tranced for  an  hour  under  the  spell  of  one  of 
these  magicians,  without  seeing  something  of 


246  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  higher  life ;  yes,  and  entering  where  these 
men  point  the  way.  Such  are  some  of  the 
methods  of  the  moral  training  of  this  people 
which  their  own  good  sense,  working  under  the 
inspiration  of  a  present  God,  have  appointed 
and  created.  Thank  God,  then,  the  beginning 
need  not  be  made !  But  if  this  nation  is  to 
endure,  if  this  country  is  to  be  a  country  worth 
living  for  and  worth  dying  for,  it  needs  vastly 
more  than  a  beginning.  This  country  needs  to 
learn  through  and  through, — from  the  Presi- 
dent and  Governor  at  one  end,  round  to  the 
meanest  pauper,  whose  taxes  are  paid  for  him  by 
a  liquor  dealer,  at  the  other  end,  —  that  behind 
and  beneath  its  education  in  fine  art,  music,  or 
drawing,  geography,  geology,  history,  reading, 
writing,  and  arithmetic,  is  its  training  in  man- 
hood and  womanhood,  its  moral  education.  As 
Mr.  Speaker  Long  said  so  well  the  other  day,  a 
prison  must  be  a  place  where  the  man  who  stole 
must  be  taught  not  to  steal ;  the  man  who  drank 
must  be  taught  not  to  drink.  A  Board  of 
Overseers  of  the  Poor  must  be  a  board  which 
shall  make  unmanly  men  manly,  and  make 


WHAT    CAREER?  247 

unwomanly  women  womanly.  Excises  are  to 
be  collected  and  tariffs  levied  on  the  principles 
of  social  life  which  shall  best  train  men  and 
women.  Amusements  are  to  be  licensed  or  re- 
pressed, liquor  is  to  be  bought  and  sold,  public 
lands  are  to  be  given  away,  emigration  to  be 
encouraged  or  repressed,  on  systems  which  shall 
make  men  and  women  purer  and  nobler.  Gov- 
ernment is  to  learn  that  this  is  What  government 
in  the  end  is  for.  It  is  not  to  make  people  rich. 
It  is  not  to  make  them  comfortable  merely.  It 
is  to  make  men  who  are  worthy  of  the  name  of 
man,  and  women  who  are  worthy  of  the  name 
of  woman. 

And  we  have  all  seen  small  communities, 
where  we  were  close  enough  to  the  work  of 
training  to  know  that  this  was  done,  and  to 
know  how  it  was  done.  It  has  been  well  said 
of  our  small  country  towns,  that  they  train  the 
men  and  the  women  who  are  to  lead  the  Bostons 
and  the  Chicagos.  Where  a  whole  community, 
led  by  its  best  members,  rises  in  protest  against 
every  nuisance  or  cause  of  injury ;  where  every 
widow  and  orphan  become  the  wards,  so  to 


248  WHAT    CAREER? 

speak,  of  the  tenderness  of  the  whole ;  where 
society,  almost  of  necessity,  envelops  and  in- 
volves poor  and  rich,  high  and  low,  in  one  small 
and  simple  coterie  or  organism,  —  then  good  has 
its  own  chance  to  overcome  evil,  and  light  its 
,  own  chance  to  dispel  darkness.  What  a  well- 
led  village  does,  really  so  simply,  is  model  or 
suggestion  for  what  a  great  city  might  try  for, 
and  what,  with  its  thousand  advantages,  it 
might  attain,  in  some  points,  better  than  the 
little  village.  It  does  not  become  us  who  live 
in  cities  to  fall  in  with  the  old  complaint  that 
they  are  always  dangers  to  the  common  weal. 
In  the  outset  of  modern  history,  cities  were  the 
birthplace  of  freedom. 

We  never  come  to-  any  crisis  in  history — a 
war,  a  conflagration,  or  a  great  election  —  with- 
out wishing  that  we  had  done  more  in  this  work 
of  training  men ;  without  grieving  for  the 
chances  we  have  lost,  and  rejoicing  for  the 
chances  we  have  used.  I  heard  a  wise  man  from 
the  West  say  last  week  that  the  tie  which  held 
the  West  to  the  East  when  the  war  came  was, 
first  of  all,  the  result  of  the  care  with  which 


WHAT    CAREER?  249 

the  East  had  built  Western  schools,  churches, 
and  colleges.  I  know  that  a  year  ago  no  man 
was  sorry  that  he  had  helped  honest  men  estab- 
lish their  homes  in  Florida.  Your  crises  in 
Washington — of  silver,  of  greenbacks,  of  elec- 
toral colleges,  of  reconstruction,  or  of  secession. 
—  all  set  you  back  to  wishing,  not  that  the 
nation  were  stronger  in  wealth,  not  that  it  were 
more  highly  educated  in  letters  or  in  arts,  but 
that  it  had  more  good  men  and  women,  that 
it  had  higher  moral  training. 

And  the  promise  of  the  Saviour  to  his  own 
was  simply  that  they  should  triumph,  because, 
as  he  said,  they  rested  on  the  rock.  "  Your 
Father  shall  give  you  the  kingdom."  You  are 
not  to  fear  unless  you  lack  in  moral  force.  For 
all  things  are  added  to  the  moral  power  which 
that  little  flock  supplies.  At  what  moment  it 
allies  itself  to  the  arm  of  flesh,  it  fails ;  as  in 
Italy  the  Church  has  failed  because  it  chose  to 
rule  by  soldiers  and  by  statesmen.  At  what 
moment  it  allies  itself  to  the  arts  of  the  intellect, 
it  fails ;  as  all  Protestantism  has  always  failed 
when  it  relied  on  its  logical  systems  or  its  syllo- 


250  WHAT    CAREER? 

gisms.  But  where  and  when  it  relies  on  truth, 
justice,  righteousness,  love,  —  then  and  there  it 
succeeds.  Other  things  round  it  crumble,  burn 
to  ashes,  or  blow  away  in  dust ;  but  the  pure 
gold  stands.  The  land  which  trains  its  people 
.in  such  eternal  life  endures.  It  is  to  such 
a  land  that  God  gives  the  kingdom. 


WHAT    CAREER?  251 


X. 

EXERCISE. 

'THWO  friends  are  in  a  boat  in  the  Mozam- 
bique Channel.  A  sudden  flaw  of  wind 
upsets  the  boat.  Before  they  can  right  her,  she 
fills  with  water,  and  sinks  ;  and  the  two  men 
are  swimming  for  their  lives.  "  Ah,  well ! " 
says  one  of  them  to  the  other,  *'  it  is  a  long  pull 
to  the  shore  ;  but  the  water  is  warm,  and  we 
are  strong.  We  will  hold  by  each  other,  and  all 
will  go  well."  —  "  No,"  says  his  friend.  "  I  have 
lost  my  breath  already  :  each  wave  that  strikes 
us  knocks  it  from  my  body.  If  you  reach  the 
shore,  —  and  God  grant  you  may  !  —  tell  my 
wife  I  remembered  her  as  I  died.  Good-by  ! 
God  bless  you ! "  and  he  is  gone.  There  is 
nothing  his  companion  can  do  for  him.  For 
himself,  all  he  can  do  is  to  swim,  and  then  float, 
and  rest  himself,  and  breathe  ;  to  swim  again, 
and  then  float,  and  rest  again,  —  hour  after 


252  WHAT    CAREER? 

hour,  to  swim  and  float,  swim  and  float,  with 
that  steady,  calm  determination  that  he  will  go 
home  ;  that  no  blinding  spray  shall  stifle  him, 
and  no  despair  weaken  him,  —  hour  after  hour, 
till  at  last  the  palm-trees  show  distinct  upon  the 
shore,  and  then  the  tall  reeds,  and  then  the 
figures  of  animals.  Will  one  never  feel  bot- 
tom ?  Yes,  at  last  his  foot  touches  the  coral, 
and  with  that  touch  he  is  safe. 

That  story  that  man  told  me. 

Now,  what  is  the  difference  between  those 
two  men  ?  Why  does  one  give  up  the  contest 
at  once,  and  resign  himself  to  what  people  call 
his  fate,  while  the  other  fights  the  circumstances 
for  hours,  and  wins  the  battle  ?  On  shipboard 
one  was  as  strong  as  the  other  ;  he  was  as  brave  ; 
he  was  as  prudent  as  the  other.  "  What  if  he 
were?"  you  say.  Strength  and  bravery  and 
prudence  were  all  needed  in  the  crisis  ;  but 
something  else  was  needed  also.  The  man  had 
never  trained  himself  to  swim.  He  knew  how 
to  swim,  if  knowing  a  method  were  of  much 
use,  where  one  has  not  trained  himself  to  the 
habit.  But  that  training  he  had  never  given. 


WHAT    CAREER?  253 

Take  that  as  a  precise  illustration,  where  no- 
Ibody  questions  the  answer,  of  the  difference 
wrought  in  two  men  merely  by  exercise,  or  the 
steadiness  of  training.  In  matters  like  this,  of 
pure  bodily  exercise,  everybody  sees  and  owns 
its  work  and  its  result. 

We  are  beginning  in  our  time  to  acknowledge 
the  same  work  and  the  same  results  in  other 
victories  and  in  their  companion  failures.  A 
country  town  sends  two  men  to  the  legislature, 
—  one  because  he  understands  all  about  the 
flowing  of  the  meadows  on  their  river,  which  is 
the  great  interest  of  that  year ;  and  another  — 
well,  because  he  has  made  a  good  speech  at  the 
town-meeting.  But  every  one  understands  that 
the  first  is  worth  five  times  as  much  as  the 
second,  and  that  his  opinion  is  of  fivefold  value. 
Yes,  so  it  is,  in  a  certain  sense.  But,  when  the 
great  day  comes,  when  that  meadow  business  is 
to  be  explained  to  the  House,  our  solid  friend, 
laden  with  facts  and  figures,  tries  to  explain  it ; 
and  he  begins  at  the  wrong  end.  He  takes  for 
granted  just  what  the  House  does  not  know, 
and  he  tells  them  just  what  they  do  know.  He 


254  WHAT    CAREER? 

empties  the  hall;  and  he  sits  down,  with  his 
speech  only  half  spoken,  ready  to  weep  for 
mortification.  It  is  then  that  his  fresh,  good- 
natured,  ready  colleague  whispers  him  out  into 
a  committee-room,  takes  the  manuscript  of  the 
unspoken  speech,  and  reads  it ;  fixes  in  his  mind 
the  four  essential  things,  and  makes  sure  that 
he  is  not  confused  about  them ;  goes  back  into 
the  House  ;  waits  till  the  right  moment ;  and 
then,  just  before  the  debate  is  closed,  speaks  for 
ten  minutes  only.  And  then,  all  this  which 
was  so  dull  becomes  interesting  to  us  all,  and 
that  which  was  so  obscure  becomes  perfectly 
clear ;  and  the  whole  business  of  the  meadows 
is  set  right  for  a  century.  What  is  the  differ- 
ence between  those  two  men?  You  have  to 
confess  there,  that  training,  thorough  exercise, 
applies  not  only  to  swimming  and  fencing,  and 
playing  the  piano,  and  other  matters  of  muscle 
and  nerve,  —  it  applies  also,  it  seems,  to  memory 
and  reasoning  and  imagination.  It  gives  this 
young  fellow  confidence  and  presence  of  mind 
in  face  of  an  unfriendly  audience,  just  as  it 
gave  the  other  confidence  and  perseverance  in 


WHAT    CAREEK?  255 

face  of  blinding  spray.  Whatever  memory  is, 
whether  it  be,  as  I  suppose  it  is,  simply  a  me- 
chanical adjustment  of  fibres  of  the  brain,  or 
whether  it  be  some  inexplicable  process  of  the 
spirit,  —  whatever  the  faculty  of  reasoning  is, 
and  whatever  the  faculty  of  the  imagination  is, 
—  you  find  on  any  field-day,  when  the  several 
recruits  of  God's  army  are  reviewed,  that  those 
who  have  been  exercised  or  drilled  in  the  use  of 
their  faculties  are,  in  that  very  training,  the  su- 
periors of  those  who  have  let  such  drilling  or  exer- 
cise go  by.  And  so  of  other  mental  powers. 

It  is  when  we  leave  the  domains  of  reasoning, 
of  memory,  or  imagination,  and  come  into  lines 
of  life  even  more  difficult,  if  they  be  more 
familiar,  that  people  begin  to  talk  wildly,  and 
fail  to  understand  what  one  of  the  masters 
meant  when  he  spoke  of  those  "  who  have  their 
faculties  trained  to  the  knowledge  of  good 
and  "evil."  Granted  that  swimming  must  be 
learned ;  granted  that  the  arts  of  the  orator 
must  be  learned.  Yes  ;  but  people  say,  care- 
lessly, that  every  man  knows  the  difference  be- 
tween right  and  wrong ;  and  therefore  it  is  said 


256  WHAT    CAREER? 

there  is  no  need  of  training  there.  "We  are 
outside  the  domain  of  the  body,"  it  is  said. 
"  We  are  in  the  impalpable  and  viewless  domain 
of  the  spirit."  Impalpable  and  viewless,  — 
granted ;  but  not  without  law  because  viewless 
and  impalpable.  The  great  law  of  life  comes 
in  there  as  everywhere,  that  "  practice  makes 
perfect,"  and  that  nothing  else  makes  perfect. 
It  is  not  enough  to  know  the  right.  That  poor 
fellow  who  sank  in  the  Mozambique  Channel 
knew  how  to  swim ;  but  he  had  not  that  steady 
familiarity  with  the  water,  and  that  godlike 
confidence  in  his  own  power,  which  comes  from 
practice  in  swimming,  and  from  that  alone. 
That  worthy  man  who  broke  down  before  his 
audience  knew  what  he  wanted  to  say ;  nay,  it 
was  all  written  on  the  paper  in  his  hand ;  nay, 
between  his  tears  of  mortification,  he  could  tell 
it  all  to  the  other  when  they  retired.  What  he 
wanted  was  not  the  knowledge  of  the  thing,  but 
practice,  habit,  and  experience  in  saying  it. 
And  these  simple  illustrations  are  enough  to 
show  how  fatuous  and  short-sighted  is  the  cool, 
off-hand  statement  which  says,  that,  because  we 


WHAT    CAREER?  257 

all  know  the  right,  we  shall,  of  course,  equal 
each  other  in  our  capacity  for  doing  it  in  an 
emergency. 

Dr.  Watts  struck  on  the  true  statement  when 
he  described  those 

"  Who  know  what's  right ;  not  only  so, 
But  also  p-ac-TiSE  what  they  know." 

One  of  our  most  distinguished  teachers,  the 
late  Francis  Gardner,  said,  that  in  the  case  of 
two  thousand  or  more  boys  who  had  passed 
under  his  care,  no  parent  forgave  him  if  he  said, 
"Your  boy  is  not  quick  or  bright;  but  he  is 
thoroughly  pure  and  true  and  good."  They 
did  not  forgive  him  for  saying  so,  because  they 
took  it  for  granted  that  the  goodness  could  be 
attained  in  any  odd  hour  or  so  ;  but  the  bright- 
ness or  quickness  seemed  of  much  larger  im- 
portance. On  the  other  hand,  if  the  teacher 
said,  "  Your  boy  learns  every  lesson,  and  recites 
it  well ;  he  is  at  the  head  of  his  class,  and  will 
take  any  place  he  chooses  in  any  school,"  nine 
parents,  he  said,  out  of  ten,  were  satisfied,  though 
he  should  have  to  add,  "  I  wish  I  were  as  sure 
that  he  were  honest,  pure,  and  unselfish.  But  in 


258  WHAT    CAREER? 

the  truth  the  other  boys  do  not  like  him ;  and  I 
am  afraid  there  is  something  wrong."  To  that 
warning,  he  said,  people  reply,  "  Ah,  well,  I  was 
a  little  wild  myself  when  I  was  a  boy.  That 
will  all  come  right  in  time."  "  Will  come 
right,"  as  if  that  were  the  one  line  of  life  which 
took  care  of  itself,  which  needed  no  training  ; 
the  truth  being,  that  this  is  the  only  thing  which 
does  not  come  right  in  time.  It  is  the  one  thing 
which  requires  eternity  for  its  correction,  if  the 
work  of  time  have  not  been  eagerly  and  care- 
fully, and  with  prayer,  wrought  through. 

When,  then,  we  say,  as  we  have  to  say  so 
often,  that  one  of  two  men  has  been  taken  for  a 
higher  preferment,  has  been  promoted  to  a  no- 
bler career,  and  that  the  other  has  been  left,  or, 
BO  to  speak,  set  aside,  we  are  sure  to  find,  if  we 
can  only  reach  a  high  enough  point  of  view  to 
look  down  on  the  map  or  ground-plan  of  the  two 
lives,  that  there  has  been  a  very  sufficient  "  law 
of  selection,"  which  has  governed  the  taking  or 
the  rejection.  The  man  who  learned  to  swim 
has  swum.  The  man  who  learned  to  speak  has 
spoken.  And  it  is  as  true  that  the  man  who 


WHAT    CAREER?  259 

has  trained  his  conscience  assiduously  and  loy- 
ally, as  a  man  of  honor  does,  is  not  tempted,  no, 
not  a  hair's  breadth,  by  any  thing  which  un- 
trained men  call  temptation.  This  is  simply  as 
a  truly  trained  gentleman  does  not  so  much  as 
think  of  the  possibility  of  saying  what  is  not 
true. 

The  truth  is  that  exercise  is  just  as  essential 
in  the  creation  of  character  or  its  preservation 
as  it  is  in  accomplishments,  whether  of  mind  or 
of  body.  In  simpler  times,  this  was  owned  in 
the  forms  of  familiar  language ;  and  in  such 
times  daily  "  exercise  "  was  the  chief  business 
of  the  man.  King  Richard,  Cceur  de  Lion, 
did  not  expect  to  maintain  his  prowess  without 
steady  exercise  in  the  arts  which  went  to  it. 
Because  he  rode  well  when  he  was  a  squire,  he 
did  not  give  up  his  daily  exercise  in  riding  when 
he  was  knight  or  when  he  was  king.  Because, 
the  day  he  was  knighted,  he  could  strike  his 
adversary's  helmet  in  tilting,  he  did  not  suppose 
he  could  keep  his  hand  in  practice  unless  the 
steady  exercise  of  the  tilting-yard,  regularly  and 
of  system,  added  to  the  education  of  his  boy- 


260  WHAT    CAREER? 

hood.  What  was  at  first  a  difficult  accomplish- 
ment became  thus  an  easy  feat,  then  a  matter  of 
course,  and,  last,  an  unconscious  habit  or  knack 
of  hand,  arm,  foot,  and  eye.  But  he  would  have 
lost  the  habit  had  he  lost  the  daily  exercise. 

This  is  just  what  they  meant,  therefore,  in 
such  simpler  times,  when  they  say  that  a  man 
was  a  proficient  in  all  manly  exercise,  or  that  he 
kept  up  his  daily  exercises  of  piety  and  prayer, 
or  that  he  exercised  himself  in  conversation,  in 
argument,  in  poetry,  or  in  oratory. 

In  our  time,  for  better,  for  worse,  we  have 
undertaken  to  transfer  the  business  of  education 
from  youthful  and  mature  life,  and  throw  it  all 
upon  children.  A  girl  of  seventeen  tells  you 
that  she  has  "  finished  her  education ; "  and  a 
boy  of  fourteen  tells  you  that  he  hopes  to  finish 
his  next  week,  so  that  he  may  "  go  into  a  store." 

If  it  be  understood  on  all  hands  that  this 
change  is  only  a  change  in  the  use  of  that  word 
"education,"  why,  there  is  no  reason  to  com- 
plain. In  Milton's  time,  in  Raleigh's  time,  edu- 
cation meant  the  steady  unfolding  of  all  that 


WHAT    CAREER?  261 

there  is  manly  in  man  and  womanly  in  woman. 
It  was,  therefore,  steady  advance  from  knowl- 
edge to  higher  knowledge,  from  capacity  to 
higher  capacity,  from  life  to  higher  life.  It 
meant  the  leading  along  the  baby  till  he  became 

% 

the  quick,  honest,  and  fearless  boy ;  the  leading 
along  the  boy  till  he  became  the  true,  simple, 
and  modest  youth  ;  the  leading  along  the  youth 
till  he  became  the  hardy,  brave,  and  unselfish 
man  ;  the  leading  along  the  man  till  he  could 
put  the  stamp  of  age  on  what  manhood  had 
mined  ;  and  then  it  meant  the  leading  along  of 
this  ripened  man  from  this  life  to  another  life 
which  is  higher.  That  was  what  the  word  "  ed- 
ucation "  used  to  mean.  No  harm,  if  we  choose 
now  to  apply  it  only  to  certain  exercises  of 
childhood,  of  text-book,  and  of  school-room,  if 
we  are  well  aware  that  we  have  shifted  its  old 
sense.  Then  we  shall  provide  some  other  word 
for  a  great  necessity.  The  necessity  is  for  boy, 
girl,  man,  or  woman  to  .keep  all  of  good  that 
they  have  gained,  and  to  gain  more.  This  ne- 
cessity compels  their  daily  exercise. 

One  would  be  glad  to  illustrate  this  in  the 


262  WHAT    CAREER? 

discussion  of  details,  which  would  require  more 
space  than  can  be  here  given  to  them.  This 
must  be  said,  on  the  central  principle  involved, 
—  we  are  all,  in  a  large  degree,  slaves  to  what 
is  called  the  "division  of  labor."  The  shoe- 
maker, it  is  said,  therefore,  need  know  nothing 
of  farming,  nor  the  farmer  of  the  making  of 
shoes.  To  this  division  nobody  will  object,  so 
long  as  it  is  held  within  its  legitimate  limits. 
But  it  certainly  passes  those  limits,  if  it  prevent 
any  man  daily  from  getting  fair  exercise  in  each 
of  the  three  great  subdivisions  of  human  life. 
Each  man  must  have,  every  day,  exercise  in 
bodily  strength,  in  intellectual  accomplishments, 
and  in  moral  and  spiritual  life.  He  has  no  right 
to  commit  suicide  of  one  set  of  faculties  more 
than  another.  He  has  no  more  right  so  to  live 
that  his  intellectual  faculties  shall  die  out  of 
him,  or  his  spiritual  faculties  shall  die  out  of 
him,  than  he  has  to  take  the  slow  poison,  or  to 
strike  the  coward  blow  by  which  his  bodily 
faculties  shall  die. 

The  life  of  each  man  must  have,  every  day, 
its  fair   share   of  physical,  of  mental,  and  of 


WHAT    CAREER?  263 

moral  exercise.  Retaining  these  great  classes, 
you  may  subdivide  them  as  you  please.  You 
may  take  for  your  bodily  culture  your  exercise 
in  your  garden  and  orchard,  and  in  travelling  to 
and  fro,  and  leave  to  other  men  the  building  of 
your  house  and  barns,  and  the  cultivation  of 
your  food  ;  but  full  bodily  exercise  you  must 
have.  Or  I  may  take  such  branch  of  mental 
culture  as  I  please,  and  leave  to  other  men  the 
rest.  They  may  study  the  stars,  may  discuss 
politics,  may  pore  over  past  history,  while  I  con- 
tent myself  with  some  simpler  walk ;  but  some 
walk  or  other  of  mental  culture  I  must  have. 
So  I  may  leave  to  other  men  their  peculiar  pref- 
erences in  spiritual  life.  They  may  sit  wrapt 
in  meditation  on  the  unseen  glories  of  an  unseen 
God,  while  I  am  playing  jack-straws  on  the  floor 
with  my  children  ;  but  some  spiritual  exercise, 
exercise  of  the  affections,  I  must  have.  There 
is  no  division  of  labor  which  will  enable  me  to 
save  my  soul  by  proxy. 

The  definition  of  exercise,  then,  is  a  threefold 
matter ;  and  we  are  not  to  consider  the  subject 


264  WHAT    CAREER? 

as  if  it  related  simply  to  the  gymnasium,  or  the 
training  of  the  body. 

I  can  only  attempt  this  general  classification, 
simply  calling  attention  once  more  to  the  close- 
ness of  the  relations  which  bodily  exercise,  men- 
tal exercise,  and  the  exercise  of  the  affections 
bear  to  each  other.  It  is,  of  course,  impossible 
to  lay  down  rules  for  all  readers. 

The  man  whose  daily  vocation  is  active  em- 
ployment in  the  open  air  has  his  bodily  exercise 
largely  provided  for.  He  needs  to  consider  and 
plan  rather  for  his  exercises  of  mind  and  soul. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  man  or  woman  whose 
constant  duty  is  intellectual,  who  is  engaged  on 
books  or  figures,  needs  to  plan  out  physical  ex- 
ercise with  special  effort ;  and  also  must  see  all 
the  time  that,  in  the  daily  duty,  there  is  room 
and  chance  for  the  exercises  of  faith,  of  hope, 
and  of  love. 

"  We  do  not  pay  much  attention  to  arithmetic 
in  our  schools,"  said  some  Japanese  gentlemen, 
not  long  ago.  "We  think  arithmetic  makes 
men  sordid."  Perhaps  it  does  ;  perhaps  it  does 
not.  Whether  it  does  or  does  not  depends  on 


WHAT    CAREER?  265 

the   amount   of  "  exercise "   of   the   affections, 
which  is  mingled  with  the  intellectual  training. 

Of  the  physical  exercises,  it  is  more  pleasant 
to  speak  than  it  was  twenty  years  ago.  The 
war  has  called  attention  to  the  scandalous  neg- 
lect of  them  which  was  prevalent  before.  This 
nation  called  together  a  chosen  army  of  seventy- 
five  thousand  men  when  the  war  began.  The 
advance  on  Bull  Run  proved  that  those  picked 
men  could  only  move  six  miles  a  day  in  their 
first  advance  upon  their  enemy ;  this  after  near 
three  months  of  discipline  in  camp.  Compare 
that  against  a  well-authenticated  story  of  the 
movement  of  one  of  Wellington's  divisions, 
which,  in  twenty-four  hours,  marched  sixty 
miles  in  Spain  ;  or  compare  it  with  Gen.  Ord's 
advance  in  the  last  week  of  the  war,  when 
Sheridan  telegraphed  that,  if  things  were 
pushed,  the  end  had  come.  Grant  replied, 
"  Push  things  ;  "  and  then  he  pushed  them. 

Physical  exercise  is  beginning  to  be  expected 
of  young  men  and  young  women.      The  time 
may  come  when  it  shall  be  respectable  for  men 
and  women  past  thirty. 
12 


266  "WHAT    CAREER? 

For  persons  whose  daily  business  is  sedentary, 
exercise  of  the  body  seems  to  come  in  more  easily 
in  the  line  of  their  amusements.  Spirited  games, 
in  simple  times  and  simple  nations,  filled  out  a 
great  necessity.  The  illustration  of  the  game  of 
croquet,  which  keeps  people  in  the  open  air,  shows 
what  such  amusements  can  do.  An  English- 
man's shooting  and  riding  after  the  hounds  have 
had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  fine  physical 
health  of  the  upper  classes  among  the  English. 
The  constitution  is  inherited  even  by  girls  born 
from  such  fathers ;  and  the  taste  for  open-air 
exercise  continues  in  the  next  generation,  even 
with  women  who  would  consider  it  unwomanly 
to  shoot,  or,  perhaps,  to  ride  after  the  hounds. 
Cricket,  as  it  is  played  by  the  cricket-clubs,  is 
reduced  to  too  solemn  a  game  to  be  of  much  use 
as  amusement  or  as  exercise.  Biit  the  cricket 
of  a  village -green,  where  there  is  not  much 
science,  and  where  there  is  a  great  deal  of  fun, 
answers  a  much  better  purpose.  Base-ball  has 
much  more  amiable  qualities.  With  us,  it  is 
just  now  being  ruined  by  the  American  ex- 
travagances, which  make  it  what  people  call  a 


WHAT    CAREER?  267 

u  sporting  game,"  a  game  of  "  professionals,"  as 
the  popular  slang  calls  them.  Still,  we  ought 
not  to  permit  the  gamblers  to  drive  us  from  an 
amusement  which  is  our  right.  The  fair  devel- 
opment of  this  game  is  doing  a  good  deal  to  res- 
cue open-air  amusements  from  their  degradation. 

Women  have  not  paid  as  much  attention  to 
base-ball  as  perhaps  they  will.  A  great  master 
in  open-air  games  tells  me  that  our  women  do 
not  know  the  resource  and  amusement,  for  coun- 
try or  for  indoor  life,  of  battle-door  and  shuttle- 
cock. He  tells  me  that  there  are,  at  least,  eight 
varieties  of  this  game,  some  of  them  highly  com- 
plicated, which  may  be  played  by  a  party  of 
thirty  people  together.  It  has,  of  course,  the 
great  advantage  of  giving  thorough  exercise  to 
chest,  neck,  and  arms. 

The  same  advantage  is  to  be  found  in  sweep- 
ing: if  the  windows  of  the  room  be  open,  the 
exercise  of  sweeping  can  hardly  be  rivalled.  I 
am  not  sure  whether  I  am  to  speak  of  it  as 
amusement.  It  is  certainly  recreation. 

Mr.  Nathaniel  Parker  Willis,  who,  with  a  very 
delicate  constitution,  led  a  literary  life,  and  main- 


268  WHAT    CAREER? 

tained  himself  in  active  pursuits,  gave  his  ver- 
dict for  horseback  riding  as  the  physical  exercise 
most  profitable  for  literary  men.  It  gives  air, 
chance  for  command,  and  exercise  for  lungs  and 
arms.  No  one  who  thoroughly  enjoys  riding 
will  dissent  from  him ;  but  there  are  those  who 
do  not  enjoy  it.  There  is  also  one  serious  draw- 
back on  it  which  affects  many  of  us,  namely,  that 
it  always  requires  the  existence  and  presence  of 
a  horse.  Granting  the  horse,  the  horseman  or 
horsewoman  needs  also  a  companion ;  for  there 
is  danger  that  the  solitary  horseman  will  carry 
his  ledger  with  him  in  the  front  of  his  head  and 
repeat  his  calculations  as  he  rides,  or  turn  over 
again  that  ugly  letter  which  he  received  from  a 
disappointed  correspondent,  or  plan  out  for  the 
tenth  time  the  closing  argument  by  which  he  is 
to  reply  to  the  defendant's  counsel  after  they 
have  closed.  Granting  the  horse,  granting  good 
companionship,  granting  a  good  seat,  and  a  pleas- 
ant day,  a  horseback  ride  certainly  does  unite  all 
the  requisites  for  healthful  exercise. 

Military   drill   stands   very  high   among  the 
various  manly  exercises.     If  the  women  secure 


WHAT    CAREER?  269 

the  ballot,  of  course  it  will  rank  among  womanly 
exercises  ;  for  it  is  very  clear  that  no  one  should 
give  a  vote  which,  when  the  time  comes,  she  is 
not  prepared  to  defend.  The  special  advantage 
is  that  the  tired  brain  rests  almost  wholly,  while 
the  manual  of  arms,  or  the  marching  under  orders, 
goes  on.  Therecruit  is  wholly  free  from  respon- 
sibility. I  recollect  the  short  periods  of  my  own 
military  service  as  periods  of  almost  complete 
rest,  though  I  was  in  high  bodily  activity.  Such 
a  comfort  for  an  hour,  or  indeed  for  a  series  of 
hours,  to  have  another  man  take  the  weight  of 
direction !  In  the  ancient  systems  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  as  in  the  training  of  Richard  and 
of  Raleigh,  these  exercises  found  important 
place. 

The  various  schools  of  gymnastic  exercises 
may  safely  be  left  to  explain  their  own  proc- 
esses,—  the  heavy  weights,  the  light  weights, 
and  the  German  gymnasia.  This  is  certain,  that 
all  arrangements  should  be  as  social  as  possible ; 
and  that  the  arrangements  which  most  resemble 
those  of  a  family,  bringing  together  all  ages  and 
both  sexes,  are,  so  far,  the  best  of  all.  And  let 


270  WHAT    CAREER? 

us  avoid  the  exaggerations  which  the  teachers 
fall  into.  What  we  want  is  rightly  to  divide 
effort,  that  spirit,  soul,  and  body  may  be  trained. 
In  the  lives  of  most  of  us,  great  promptness  and 
celerity  are  the  qualities  most  desirable.  As  I 
once  heard  Mr.  Starr  King  say :  "  I  do  not  want 
to  lift  eight  hundred  pounds  ;  I  never  did  want 
to.  I  do  not  want  to  be  trained  to  draw  three 
tons  on  the  high  road.  What  I  want  is  to  be 
able  to  go  at  2.40." 

Mr.  Webster,  who  was  a  great  worker,  used 
to  say  that  he  could  do  more  in  six  hours  than 
he  could  in  eight.  He  meant  that,  by  rightly 
throwing  in  two  hours  of  exercise  in  the  open 
air,  —  fishing  in  the  bay  at  Marshfield,  or  fol- 
lowing a  trout-brook  at  Boscawen,  —  he  could 
make  the  remaining  six  hours  of  more  use  than 
all  the  eight  together.  That  system  was  the 
secret  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  physical  train- 
ing. Physical  training  was  not  a  thing  for  boys 
alone,  but  for  men,  and,  in  Sparta,  for  women 
also. 

In  our  climate,  and  in  all  climates  milder  than 
ours,  swimming,  for  the  season  when  it  is  prac- 


WHAT    CA11EER?  271 

ticable,  seems  the  exercise  most  efficient  for  men 
and  for  women.  I  believe  it  is  still  against  the 
law  for  any  person  to  go  into  the  waters  which 
wash  the  city  of  Boston.  But  as  the  city  has 
provided  bathing-places  in  which  a  hundred 
thousand  people  freely  bathed  last  year,  I  sup- 
pose we  may  consider  that  ordinance  virtually 
repealed.  And  we  who  live  in  Boston  must 
look  on  the  arrangement  most  gratefully,  as  the 
beginning  of  a  system  for  hearty  and  sensible 
physical  exercise  of  the  people. 

To  speak  of  mental  exercises  in  detail  is  to 
go  over  the  whole  compass  of  study  involved  in 
liberal  culture.  To  discuss  such  "exercises," 
retaining  the  use  of  the  word  as  it  would  have 
been  familiar  to  Raleigh  or  to  Milton,  is  the 
work  not  of  the  end  of  an  essay,  but  of  a 
volume. 

Such  a  discussion  I  hope  to  enter  upon  — 
although  only  in  an  elementary  way  —  in  the 
next  volume  of  this  little  series. 

THE  END. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 


IN    HIS   NAME. 

A  Story  of  the  Waldenses,  Seven  Hundred  Years  Ago. 

BY  E.  E.  HALE. 
Square  iSmo.      Price  $1.00. 

From  the  Liberal  Christian. 

"  One  of  the  most  helpful,  pure,  and  thoroughly  Christian  books  of  which  we 
have  any  knowledge.  It  has  the  mark  of  no  sect,  creed,  or  denomination  upon  it, 
but  the  spirit  pervading  it  is  the  Christly  spirit.  .  .  .  We  might  well  speak  of  the 
author's  great  success  in  giving  an  air  of  quaintness  to  the  style,  befitting  a  story 
of  life  'seven  hundred  years  ago.'  We  do  not  know  exactly  what  lends  to  it  this 
flavor  of  antiquity,  but  the  atmosphere  is  full  of  some  subtle  quality  which  removes 
the  tale  from  our  nineteenth  century  commonplace.  In  this  respect,  and  in  its 
dramatic  vividness  of  action,  '  In  His  Name,'  perhaps,  takes  as  high  a  rank  as  any 
of  Mr.  Ilale's  literary  work." 

From  the  N.  Y.  Commercial  Advertiser. 

"  A  touching,  almost  a  thrilling,  tale  is  this  by  E.  E.  Hale,  in  its  pathetic  sim- 
plicity and  its  deep  meaning.  It  is  a  story  of  the  Waldenses  in  the  days  when 
Richard  Cceur  de  Lion  and  his  splendid  following  wended  their  way  to  the  Cru- 
sades, and  when  the  name  of  Christ  inspired  men  who  dwelt  in  palaces,  and  men 
who  sheltered  themselves  in  the  forests  of  France.  'In  his  Name'  was  the 
*  Open  Sesame '  to  the  hearts  of  such  as  these,  and  it  is  to  illustrate  the  power  of 
this  almost  magical  phrase  that  the  story  is  written.  That  it  is  charmingly  writ- 
ten, follows  from  its  authorship.  There  is  in  fact  no  little  book  that  we  have  seen 
of  late  that  offers  so  much  of  so  pleasant  reading  in  such  little  space,  and  con- 
veys so  apt  and  pertinent  a  lesson  of  pure  religion." 

'•  The  very  loveliest  Christmas  Story  ever  written.  It  has  the  rin>;  of  an  old 
Troubadour  in  it." 

Sold  everywhere  by  all  Booksellers.  Mailed,  postpaid, 
by  the  Publishers, 

ROBERTS  BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 

OUR  NEW  CRUSADE. 

A  TEMPERANCE  STORY. 

BY  E.   E.    HALK. 
Square    iSmo.       Price   $1.00. 


From  the  Southern  Churchman, 

"  It  has  all  the  characteristics  of  its  brilliant  author,  —  unflagging  entertain- 
ment, helpfulness,  suggestive,  practical  hints,  and  a  contagious  vitality  that  sets 
one's  blood  tingling.  Whoever  has  read  'Ten  Times  One  is  Ten'  will  know  just 
what  we  mean.  The  fact  that  thirty  thousand  copies  of  this  last-named  volume 
have  been  sold  gives  one  some  idea  of  its  hold  on  the  popular  mind.  We  predict 
that  the  new  volume,  as  being  a  more  charming  story,  will  have  quite  as  great  a 
parish  of  readers.  The  gist  of  the  book  is  to  show  how  possible  it  is  for  the  best 
spirits  of  a  community,  through  wise  organization,  to  form  themselves  into  a  level 
by  means  of  which  the  whole  tone  of  the  social  status  may  be  elevated,  and  the 
good  and  highest  happiness  of  the  helpless  many  be  attained  through  the  self- 
denying  exertions  of  the  powerful  few." 

From  the  Louisville  Daily  Ledger. 

"  Mr.  Hale  thinks,  rightly,  that  this  movement  of  the  women  of  the  land  to 
put  down  an  undeniable  evil  was  not  a  wisely  directed  one.  He  is  willing  enough 
to  have  a  Crusade,  but  let  it  be  more  in  the  line  of  women's  work,  and  let  it  ap- 
peal to  all  the  best  instincts  of  our  nature,  —  not  the  resistant  ones.  Men  are  not 
going  to  be  brow-beaten  into  being  good,  especially  by  the  sex  that  has  hitherto 
been  styled  the  '  gentler  ;'  and  we  don't  much  wonder  at  it.  To  come  and  for- 
cibly take  possession  of  a  man's  place  of  business,  and  insist  upon  praying  and 
singing  him  out  of  it,  may  have,  at  bottom,  a  very  commendable  motive  to  insti- 
gate it ;  but  there  is  a  right  and  a  wrong  way  of  doing  every  thing.  This  is  the 
wrong  way.  Now,  in  his  '  New  Crusade,'  Mr.  Hale  gives  us  the  clew  to  a  much 
better,  more  reasonable,  and  altogether  more  popular  way  of  exalting  the  social 
status  in  any  given  community." 

Sold  everywhere  by  all  Booksellers.  Mailed,  postpaid^  by 
the  Publishers, 

ROBERTS  BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 

MADAME  RECAMIER  AND  HER  FRIENDS. 

FROM    THE    FRENCH   OF    MADAME    LENORMANT,   BY   THE 
TRANSLATOR  OF  "  MADAME  R^CAMIER'S  MEMOIRS." 

One  volume,  uniform  with  "  Madame  Re'camier's  Memoirs."    Price  $1.50. 

From  the  A  ttantic  Monthly. 

This  volume  comes  to  supplement  the  "  Memoirs  and  Correspondence  of 
Madame  Re'camier,"  which,  although  a  lively  and  exceedingly  entertaining  sketch 
of  the  society  of  the  Abbaye-aux-Bois,  occasioned  very  general  dissatisfaction 
among  both  its  French  and  American  readers;  for,  being  made  up  of  letters  which 
were  written  to  her,  and  not  of  those  which  she  had  herself  penned,  it  did  not 
leave  upon  the  mind  any  clear,  definite  impression  of  the  real  character  of  Ma- 
dame Re'camier,  into  whose  secret  history  all  the  world  was  curious  to  inquire. 
The  failure  of  that  copious  work  in  its  main  purpose  is  the  ostensible  cause  of  the 
existence  of  this  after  volume,  in  which  are  introduced  over  forty  of  the  private 
notes  and  letters  of  Madame  Re'camier ;  these  are  as  graceful,  genial,  and  chatty 
as  any  of  the  gossip,  legitimized  under  the  name  of  memoirs,  recollections,  cor- 
respondence, or  what  not,  which  we  have  met  with,  but  they  hardly  fill  the  gap 
which  was  left  in  the  previous  volumes. 

From  the  Unitarian  Review. 

We  think  this  book  in  many  respects  much  more  valuable  than  the  last.  How- 
ever charming  the  other  was,  we  cannot  resist  the  feeling  that  it  must  have  been 
injurious  to  woman  of  society  with  us,  in  giving  them  a  longing  after  unreal 
pleasures  .  .  .  We  believe  in  the  friendships  of  men  and  women.  But  when  the 
blandishments  and  artificialities  of  fashionable  society  come  in,  there  is  danger 
that  the  dignity  of  the  sentiment  will  be  lost  in  the  passion  of  love.  This  second 
volume  shows  more  of  this  true  kind  of  friendship.  Madame  Re'camier  was  in 
misfortune  ;  she  had  lost  her  health ;  she  showed  patience,  courage,  disinterested- 
ness for  her  friends.  We  are  taken  captive  like  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  Her 
devotion  to  her  niece  was  touching ;  her  power  of  loving  beautiful.  Her  friends 
are  noble  men  like  Camille  Jordan  and  Mathieu  de  Montmorency,  the  one  warn- 
ing her  against  coquetry,  the  other  recommending  to  her  the  joys  of  religion. 
Chateaubriand  does  not  inspire  our  respect,  and  she  betrays  again  her  early  love 
of  conquest  in  keeping  the  young  and  passionate  Ampere  so  long  at  her  side. 
We  must  not,  however,  compare  Madame  Re'camier  with  our  highest  American 
or  English  ideal  of  what  a  woman  in  distinguished  social  position  should  be,  but 
with  the  voluptuous  and  ambitious  women  of  her  day  and  race,  and  we  shall  see 
her  standing  forth  a  bright  and  charming  and  beloved  vision,  far  transcending 
them  ail. 

Sold  everywhere  by  all  Booksellers.  Mulled,  postpaid,  by 
the  Publishers, 

ROBERTS    BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers*  Publications. 


A    NILE    JOURNAL.     BY  THOMAS-  G.  APPLETON. 
Square   I2mo.     Cloth.     Price  $2.25. 

"  The  account  furnished  by  Mr.  Appleton  of  his  winter  on  the  Nile  will  proba- 
bly be  pleasant  reading  to  those  who  have  already  passed  through  the  same 
scenes.  It  gives  a  vivid  photograph  of  that  wonderful  East,  for  whose  shores  we 
all  have  a  reverent  longing.  The  journal,  kept  by  a  man  of  varied  experiences, 
and  large  and  many-sided  intelligence  and  knowledge,  cultivated  by  travel  and 
study,  is  a  far  better  way  of  conveying  even  to  the  casual  reader  a  real  picture  of 
what  is  most  striking  and  characteristic  than  a  mere  dry  recital  of  facts  and  figures, 
such  as  can  be  pieced  out  of  guide-book  and  professed  histories.  It  is  by  his  skill 
in  selection  that  Mr.  Appleton  has  made  a  book  that  is  especially  rich  in  local 
color.  Instead  of  giving  a  learned  catalogue  of  the  most  striking  remains,  he 
furnishes  a  well-digested  reference  table  of  the  books  best  worth  reading.  There 
is  little  of  statistics,  less  of  the  frequent  discussion  of  the  questions  of  Eastern 
politics,  nothing  at  all  of  Egyptian  industry,  but  there  is  a  glowing  word  painting 
of  the  scenes  daily  opened  to  a  watchful  traveller ;  and,  when  prose  fails,  poetry 
serves  to  fill  in  the  needful  touches  that  make  the  picture  perfect."  —  Philadelphia 
Ledger. 

"  We  cannot  follow  this  genial  author  any  further.  While  we  don't  find  any 
thing  very  heroic  or  daring  in  going  down  a  well-known  river  in  a  canoe,  we  find 
a  great  deal  that  is  of  surpassing  interest.  He  sees  with  the  eye  of  an  artist,  and 
therefore  always  seizes  upon  the  most  salient  points.  He  never  tires  us;  and, 
when  we  have  read  on  to  the  end  of  his  book,  we  wish  there  were  more,  or  that 
another  book  in  the  same  vein  would  soon  make  its  appearance."  —  San  Fratf 
cisco  Evening  Bulletin. 

A    SHEAF    OF    PAPERS.     BY.  T.  G.  A.     Square 

I2mo.     Cloth.     Gilt  top.     Price  $1.50. 

ik 

"These  initials  will  be  readily  recognized  as  those  of  one  of  our  best-known 
Boston  wits,  many  of  whose  quaint  sayings  have  already  become  proverbial.  .  .  . 
In  them  [the  papers],  every  reader  will  recognize  a  strong  basis  of  common  sense, 
a  lively  fancy,  and  a  keen  wit.  The  book  is  one  to  take  up  in  any  idle  hour,  and  to 
put  in  one's  pocket  for  a  travelling  companion ;  and  one  cannot  help  wishing 
that  the  writer  had  also  included  in  it  some  of  the  poems  which  were  privately 
printed  several  months  ago."  — Boston  Transcript. 

''  A  very  pleasant  and  thoughtful  book,  which  we  who  are  not  of  Boston  do  not 
like  any  less,  but  rather  more,  because  it  has  an  eminently  Bostonish  flavor ;  and 
it  affects  us  somewhat  as  '  a  fine  last  century  face.'  These  papers  could  not  have 
been  written  from  any  other  motive  than  the  joy  of  writing  them.  They  have  an 
air  of  quiet  about  them  that  is  wonderfully  refreshing.  Their  talk  of  'Art  and 
Artists  is  particularly  pleasant."  —  Christian  Register. 

"  He  is  one  of  the  few  Americans  who  have  written  too  little,  Mr.  Emerson 
being  the  most  conspicuous  of  that  smalj  band.  A  man  of  native  wit,  and  now  <rf 
world  wide  experience,  too  little  of  which,  perhaps,  is  practical,  he  cannot  write 
otherwise  than  pleasantly,  and  often  with  a  profound  wisdom  which  takes  on  a 
superficial  air  only  from  the  gayety  of  his  style.  He  can  write  as  lightly  as  a 
Frenchman,  as  seriously  as  a  German,  and  yet  with  all  his  culture  and  his  foreign 
anecdotes  is  simply  an  American,  —  even  a  Bostonian,  —  malgri  lui."  — Spring- 
field  Republican. 

Sold   by  all   booksellers.      Mailed,    postpaid,    by    the 
Publishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 


REASON,  FAITH.  AND  DUTY. 

Sermons  preached  chiefly  in  the  College  Chapel.  By 
JAMES  WALKER,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  late  President  of  Harvard 
College.  With  a  new  likeness  of  Dr.  Walker  engraved  ex- 
pressly for  this  book.  Square  I2mo.  Cloth.  Price  $2.00. 


From  ihe  ffevt  York  Tribune. 

The  late  President  Walker  is  held  in  affectionate  and  reverent  memory  by  a 
wide  circle  of  pupils,  and  a  numerous  company  of  friends  who  were  daily  wit- 
nesses of  the  blended  charm  and  energy  of  his  character.  He  was  a  man  who 
made  a  deep  impression  on  all  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  The  austerity  of 
his  intellect  was  combined  with  a  gracious  sweetness  of  demeanor  rarely  found 
together  in  the  same  person.  The  leading  feature  of  his  nature  was  a  sense  of 
justice  which  in  his  mind  was  identical  with  a  passion  for  truth.  This  quality 
seasoned  and  animated  the  whole  course  of  his  life. 

From  the  Unitarian  Review. 

Dr.  Walker  was  pre-eminently  a  preacher  for  preachers  to  study.  He  was  strong 
exactly  where  the  usual  pulpit  style  of  address  is  weak ;  and  to  this  is  to  be  as- 
cribed the  influence  of  his  sermons  over  the  very  classes  whom  preaching  finds 
most  difficulty  in  affecting.  Young  men  full  of  impatience  at  the  conventional, 
and  quick  to  scorn  shams  and  empty  words,  hung  on  his  speech ;  clear-headed 
and  hard-headed  business  men  recognized  in  him  a  master  of  the  secrets  of  human 
nature ;  souls  of  the  most  earnest  piety  found  in  his  few  simple  words  renewal 
and  inspiration. 

From  the  Boston.  Transcript. 

There  can  scarce  be  a  religious  person  of  any  style  or  school,  a  philosopher 
even,  or  a  moralist,  or  a  simple  lover  of  earnest,  lucid,  and  vigorous  intellectual 
power,  given  to  didactic  discoursing  in  preaching  or  in  ethics,  but  will  detect  and 
own  and  feel  the  master's  sway  in  this  volume. 


Sold   by    all   booksellers.      Mailed,   post-paid,    by    the 
Publishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,   BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers    Publications. 

WAYS  OF  THE  SPIRIT, 

AND    OTHER    ESSAYS. 

BY 

FREDERIC   HENRY   HEDGE,   D.D.,    LL.D. 


The  Way  of  History  ;  The  Way  of  Religion ;  The  Way 
of  Historic  Christianity  ;  The  Way  of  Historic  Atonement ; 
The  Natural  History  of  Theism  ;  Critique  of  Proofs  of  the 
Being  of  God;  On  the  Origin  of  Things  ;  The  God  of  Re- 
ligion, or  the  Human  God ;  Dualism  and  Optimism  ;  Pan- 
theism ;  The  Two  Religions  ;  The  Mythical  Element  in  the 
New  Testament ;  Incarnation  and  Transubstantiation  ;  The 
Human  Soul. 

SQUARE  I2MO.  CLOTH.  PRICE  $2.00. 


Sold  by  all  booksellers.     Mailed,  postpaid,  by  the  Pub- 
lishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Ptiblications. 

LAST     SERIES 

OF 

CHRISTIAN    ASPECTS    OF    FAITH 
AND    DUTY. 

Discourses  by  JOHN  JAMES  TAYLER,  Late  Principal  of 
Manchester  New  College,  London.  Square  I2tno.  Cloth. 
Price  $2.00. 

From  the  Christian  Register. 

Twenty-six  sermons,  mostly  preached  within  the  last  ten 
years  of  the  author's  life,  are  here  selected  and  arranged  by  his 
daughter,  who  has  been  assisted  by  Rev.  James  Martineau. 
This  is  not  a  volume  for  sensation  hunters,  but  for  those  who 
hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness.  The  high  and  serious 
mind  of  John  James  Tayler  could  treat  no  pulpit  theme 
except  with  reference  to  the  deep  and  unutterable  wants  of 
the  human  soul.  He  welcomes  "  every  new  discovery  of 
science,  and  every  fresh  result  of  scholarship,  as  phenomena 
which  themselves  become  religious  through  the  light  cast  on 
them  by  the  soul."  He  thus  puts  all  nature  in  harmony  with 
"  the  spirit  of  Christ,  whose  image  is  ever  before  him  as  an 
embodiment  of  true  religiousness."  The  volume  fitly  closes 
with  a  sermon  on  "The  Immortal  Future  Mercifully  Veiled 
to  Us  by  God,"  —  the  last  pulpit  discourse  of  Mr.  Tayler, 
who  died  in  1869,  in  his  seventy-second  year. 

From  the  Boston  Globe. 

Tender  in  their  sympathy,  gentle  in  their  thoughtfulness, 
yet  strong  and  brave  in  their  assertion  of  the  vital  truths  of 
religion  and  morality,  these  discourses  are  worthy  of  a  place 
in  the  library  of  every  Christian.  Their  breadth  and  liberal- 
ity of  tone  show  the  high  plane  of  endeavor  which  the  author 
has  sought  and  attained. 

Sold  by  all  booksellers.  Af ailed,  postpaid,  by  the  Pub- 
lishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 


QUIET    HOURS. 

A    COLLECTION   OF  POEMS,  MEDITATIVE 
AND    RELIGIOUS. 


"Under  this  modest  title  we  have  here  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  best 
short  poems  in  the  language.  The  compiler,  whoever  she  is,  has  a  rare  taste,  and 
also,  what  is  equally  valuable,  good  judgment.  The  poems  are  on  all  subjects. 
This  dainty  little  volume  is  just  the  book  for  a  Christmas  or  New  Year's  girt." 
—  Peterson  s  Magazine. 

"  Such  a  book  as  this  seems  to  us  much  better  adapted  than  any  formal  book 
of  devotion  to  beget  a  calm  and  prayerful  spirit  in  the  reader.  It  will  no  doubt 
become  a  dear  companion  to  many  earnestly  religious  people  "  —  Christian 
Register. 

" '  Quiet  Hours '  is  the  appropriate  title  which  some  unnamed  compiler  has  given 
to  a  collection  of  musings  of  many  writers  —  a  nosegay  made  up  of  some  slighter, 
choicer,  and  more  delicate  flowers  from  the  garden  of  the  poets.  Emerson, 
Chadwick,  Higginson,  Arnold,  Whittier,  and  Clough,  are  represented,  as  well  as 
Coleridge,  Browning,  Wordsworth,  and  Tennyson  ;  and  the  selections  widely 
vary  in  character,  ranging  from  such  as  relate  to  the  moods  and  aspects  of  na- 
ture, to  voices  of  the  soul  when  most  deeply  stirred."  —  Cottgregatumalist. 


i8mo,  cloth,  red  edges.     Price  $1.00.     Sold  by  all  Book- 
sellers.    Mailed,  postpaid,  by  the  Publishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS, 

Boston. 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


